It is Our Nature
by Mantis Man
Summary: A Love Hina - Underworld crossover
1. Returning to Peace

**Disclaimers:**

**This is a fanfiction written for the exclusive twin purposes of my own amusement and the amusement of other fans of either of the title universes. insert all the usual crap that people say to quell their fears of overzealous copyright infringement hunters here**

**I've done my best not to contradict any Underworld lore that was actually set forth by the movies, but I have of course added my own elements that I do not feel are at odds with the movies.**

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**Author's notes:**

**This story begins immediately after Episode 25 and disregards the events of the Christmas Special, the Spring Special, and Love Hina Again.**

**It does not refer to any specific point in the Underworld timeline.**

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Motoko awoke feeling better than she had in a very long time. Even before Keitaro's arrival at Hinata, the event that had shaken her world down to the core and changed so many things, though she had given the impression to all the other residents that she was the very picture of calm and collection, she had always been troubled by those uncomfortable issues of her past. Her sister marrying. Leaving her sword behind. Her own feelings of inadequacy towards her sister. Tsuruko ... yes, this person so dear to Motoko was also the root of the troubles that had haunted her mind so for so many years. But all of this, years worth of stewing, fretting, worrying, fearing ... had all been swept away in 3 epic days.

* * *

With only a same-day dream for a warning, Tsuruko had arrived otherwise totally unannounced and unexpectedly. Keitaro had been a part of her world for some time by then, and despite her best efforts his influence had begun to tell upon her. She often now wore clothing more or less typical of an average female citizen as opposed to a single-minded swordswoman. Her tone, her demeanor, her attitude, and her amiability had all been noticeably softened by the tender (if not rather clumsy) hands of Keitaro, and although Motoko was able to hide both the nature and origin of the latter four of those changes from most people, her sister saw through Motoko's game as though it were a wafer-thin sheet of the finest glass.

* * *

But what Tsuruko saw was not entirely the truth either. She thought she saw a Motoko who had allowed herself and her skills to decline in favor of adopting the live of a normal woman. She was wrong. She overestimated the degree to which Motoko's divergence from the traditional path that the women of their ilk were expected to follow had degraded her capabilities. Motoko within those 3 days emerged from her darkest hour and had redeemed herself to her sister and to herself. Keitaro, the man whom she had at first thought she hated, had been at the base of the whole thing. Despite the terrible treatment that she had wrought upon him, he had given her that small lift out of the dark hole into which she had fallen, and had fought valiantly at her side, unskilled though he was, to defeat Tsuruko within the 3 short days that they had been given to do so. Against this, Keitaro had wagered the future that he so desperately wanted and had suffered through so much just to get as far as he was. For while defeating Tsuruko within those 3 days offered redemption, failure to do so meant marriage between Motoko and Keitaro, and while Motoko knew that Keitaro was prepared to pay the price of their defeat, she knew that was not what he wanted. Not for himself, not for her. Indeed, though she was still very modest about revealing this fact, she had finally come to respect Keitaro, and she knew that she was not the one for whom Keitaro's heart longed. Strangest of all, she found herself feeling the slightest twinges of sadness for that fact.

* * *

Anyhow, Motoko and Keitaro had emerged victorious from Tsuruko's challenge. In that single moment a near-lifetime's worth of sorrow, regret, remorse, fear, and uncertainty had been torn away from Motoko's psyche. She sprung herself out of bed this morning with a sense of emotional liberation that filled her with a bliss that she could not recall ever having felt before.

* * *

Keitaro Urashima awoke much as he did just about every other morning. Naturally his memories of the events of the previous day, and his appreciation of the significance thereof, were no less vivid than they were for Motoko. However, if there was one lesson that he'd had to quickly learn in order to survive the bizarre and extreme situations that seemed to grow out of Hinata like weeds, it was to take things in stride. Indeed, although he certainly stood much to lose if the events of yesterday had gone the other way, the battle itself had really been Motoko's. In terms of physical and mental abuse, he had endured far worse than that. There had been far less benevolent spirit behind Motoko's early attacks upon him than had been behind those from her sister, he had come to appreciate the aerial beauty of Hinata courtesy of Naru's gravity-defying punches and kicks, and Suu, though completely innocent in intention, suffered from the "400 pound kitten" syndrome; the irrepressible young girl's extraordinary strength and limitless energy, her apparent failure to understand the dangerousness of the of the products of her equally extraordinary mechanical genius, and her total lack of any sort of inhibition, meant that, whether it was all in play or not, Suu was quite a force to be reckoned with. Topped off with the constant and near-unsupportable drain on his wallet brought on by Kitsune's incessant trickery, extortion, and outright theft, the one-time, short-lived battle with the formidable but still well-meaning swordsmaster did not leave the same impression on Keitaro that it would have most people. For him, it was little more than another crazy day at the Hinata Inn. In his typical, rather ungraceful way, he hauled himself out of bed, not bothering to change out of his pajamas, and followed his nose to the kitchen, where Shinobu was preparing to open the day with her customary breakfast of champions.

* * *

"Good morning sempai," piped Shinobu. However unpresentable he sometimes would appear, Keitaro was always a welcome sight to her. 

"Good morning Shinobu-chan," replied Keitaro, Shinobu's voice snapping him out of his auto-pilot. "How are you feeling today?"

Shinobu gave a cheerful smile. "I'm very happy that everything worked out yesterday and that everybody is OK"

Keitaro smiled back at her. "No matter how bad they first seem, things always do seem to turn out for the best around here, don't they?"

"Yes they do."

"Let me tell you, no small part of the reason for that is that we all know that if we manage to survive the day, then we have another of your breakfasts to look forward to the next morning," said Keitaro as he deeply sniffed the delightful aroma filling the kitchen.

Shinobu blushed at the compliment. "I'm glad you like my cooking, sempai. I do my best."

Keitaro laughed. "Shinobu-chan, you are to the skillet what Motoko is to the sword. Your _worst_ is better than most people's _best._" The mention of another person suddenly cued Keitaro into the fact that he and Shinobu were alone downstairs. "Hey, where is everybody?"

"You're the first one up, sempai."

"Wow. When was the last time that happened?"

"Not since I've been here," Shinobu said, never losing her smile. As if to minimize the moment, both Shinobu and Keitaro simultaneously became aware of Motoko's approach. She entered the room with an aura of peace positively radiating about her.

* * *

"Shinobu, Keitaro," she said, nodding to each of them in turn. 

"How are _you_ feeling today Motoko?" asked Keitaro

In what was still a rare occurrence, Motoko smiled at Keitaro. "Better than I've felt in a long time, Keitaro. Thanks largely to you."

"Aww Motoko, it was you who won the day yesterday. I had little to do with it," replied Keitaro, grabbing a chair at the table.

"But without your encouragement, I might not have ever challenged my sister in the first place."

"I think you would have, in your own good time."

"Perhaps. But please just accept my sincerest gratitude for everything that you've done for me. I hope I can return the favor to you someday."

"I'll keep that in mind. If I ever need some demon or monster defeated, you'll be the first person I come to."

Motoko smiled again at Keitaro's words and took her seat at the table.

* * *

Breakfast and the rest of the morning passed rather without exception, the most remarkable happenstance perhaps was the fact that Keitaro went the whole time without receiving so much as a hostile glance from anyone, even Naru. Like much else that happened around Hinata, he had come to regard a daily dose of abuse from Naru (among others) as a matter of fact and rarely thought much of it these days. But today, instead of throwing his some sour glare or finding some excuse to batter him across the complex, Naru had simply shot Keitaro a suppressed smile, grabbed her breakfast, bid him good morning, and had taken her meal back up to her room. Suu, though she had bounded through the kitchen like a human pinball as usual, had spared Keitaro her usual flying kick or mechanical attack that were her typical greetings, instead subjecting him to a slam-tackle bear hug and some embarrassing comment about him being Motoko's hero. This drew a hearty laugh from everyone but the awkwardly smiling Keitaro and the flustered Motoko, who quickly then finished her breakfast and retreated to her own room. Afterwards, against a meek protest from Shinobu, Keitaro had stuck around to help clean up the breakfast mess while everyone else went about their daily business.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Keitaro headed over to Naru's room for their usual study session. Knocking softly on the door, a nondescript "come in" resounded from within. Keitaro opened the door to find Naru sitting in the corner, wearing an expression that Keitaro read as one of confusion, and .. was it a trace of fear? Naru looked up at Keitaro and started, as though he was the last person in the world she expected to see. 

"Umm ... are we still on for studying?"

Naru simply stared up at him, her eyes bearing down upon him without a trace of the reservation that was usually the best Keitaro could hope for when initiating contact with Naru. Instead, her eyes shone with such powerful emotion that put the butterflies in Keitaro's stomach and he broke eye contact with her. By change, he had shifted his gaze to the table where they were supposed to be doing their studying. No books or papers were on the table, however. Naru's breakfast sat there, totally untouched.

"Naru, your breakfast ... are you feeling alright?"

"_No, you idiot ... you almost ... with Motoko ... what if ... how would you feel? ... if someone you love ..." _ran Naru's thoughts. However, " umm ... yes, I'm fine, I'm just ... not feeling well today," were the words that came out.

"So ... do you want to study right now?" asked Keitaro, catching the contradiction in what Naru had just said but choosing not to make mention of it.

"You'd better study without me today ..." said Naru detachedly and looking away.

"Umm ..."

"Go on."

Keitaro took a good look at Naru and felt compelled not to pursue the issue right then. He bowed himself out and left the room, closing the door softly behind him. He went to his room and pulled out his study materials. Hunkering down, he did his best to focus on his studies, although his wondering about what was wrong with Naru never left the top of his mind. After a short while, he had abandoned his studies altogether and drifted off into sleep to the image of Naru sitting in the corner ...

* * *

As Hinata slept, a small plane came in to land at the nearby airport. Pulling up to the tarmac in under the dull light of a gibbous moon, the door opened and four pale figures exited the aircraft. They walked over to the terminal where they quickly located the rental car booths, exchanged short and concise words with the employee there, and tossed him a small bundle of cash. Moving outside the airport, a large SUV pulled up to them after a few minutes. The driver got out to hand the lead figure the keys, but they were snatched from his hand before he had even fully extended it. The driver looked up in surprise to find four sets of eerily blue eyes piercing his own like a set of icicles. 

"What the hell are you looking at? Get lost!" Said the lead figure to the driver in a very hostile tone that was even more frightening coming out of such an intimidating persona. The driver offered neither back-talk nor delay in following his customer's order.


	2. Nothing Will Ever Be The Same

Naru looked sleeplessly at her clock. 2:30 am. She gave a heavy sigh - she had sat in her room all day and all night furiously debating with herself about whether or not to do what she had finally decided to do, but now she was going to do it. With rather shaky resolve she forced herself to stand up. She had been lying in her bed for several hours now but had not even changed her clothes. All the better, she decided, for offering her less distraction and less time to change her mind. For while her heart and mind alike were less than certain about what she was about to do, deep down both knew that she had been very lucky that her failure to do this sooner had not cost her dearly, and that she might not be so lucky a second time. She took a deep breath, focused herself, walked out of her room and went over to Keitaro's room.

* * *

"Keitaro," said a soft voice, barely jarring him out of his sleep. "Keitaro?"

"Huh? Whothere?" Keitaro mumbled out as his consciousness entered that not-quite-asleep, not-quite-awake state. As he opened his eyes and saw the origin of the voice staring at him from above, his eyes quickly flew all the way open and with almost equal speed he shot himself out from under Naru.

"Huh? Naru? I'm sorry! I don't know how I ended up in your room! I ..." Keitaro became aware of his surroundings just then. "Naru, you're in _my_ room ..." he said with the surprise in voice being unintentionally thick.

"I .. I'm sorry Keitaro. I ... just wanted to talk..."

"About what, Naru?" asked Keitaro, suddenly feeling as though he were both weightless and upside down in his own room.

Even in the low light, the embarrassed blush on Naru's face was obvious. "Well ... umm ... I ..." Her direction crumbled under the gaze of Keitaro's big, heartful and always kind eyes, and she was forced to look away. "...can we go for a walk?"

"Umm, ya, I guess so," replied Keitaro, puzzlement now being the dominant feeling running through him. Puzzled though he was, he nevertheless got out of bed, sliding into his shoes but without changing out of his PJs, and quietly walked out of the Hinata Inn side by side with Naru. However, their exit had not gone totally unnoticed. A sly figure followed them silently outside and hugged the shadows behind them.

* * *

Naru had waited until they had walked some distance from the Hinata Inn and into a nearby park before speaking. "Keitaro, I ... I've been thinking ..."

"About what?"

The peaceful, soft tone of Keitaro's voice combined with the serene silence and stillness of the night around them suddenly brought Naru's emotions to the near surface, and despite the rather plutonic nature of their conversation so far she suddenly found herself fighting back tears. "I ... umm ... you ..." She made the mistake of meeting Keitaro's eyes once again. He noticeably started when he saw the welled-up tears her eyes, and the concern that his eyes spoke back was too much for her. With a great release of much pent-up emotion, she flung herself into Keitaro's arms and clung to him as though the heavens themselves were trying to take him away, and she wept her heart out. Keitaro, completely floored, stood there in total shock, unable to do or say anything but to gently wrap his arms around Naru in return. He stood there for what felt like half an eternity with the love of his life crying her eyes out on his shoulder. Finally, as Naru's tears began to slacken, Keitaro spoke.

"Naru?"

She looked up at him. For once, she was not concerned with how she appeared to him, which was fortunate, because having just offloaded such a powerful payload of emotion into his shirt she was not looking like what she would have called her own best. But Keitaro was likewise in no state of mind to notice. He was still trying to make sense out of her sudden and totally unexpected outburst.

"Keitaro ... I ... I ..." But before she could say anything more, Naru's senses were themselves assailed by a totally unexpected sound - gunshots. Gunshots followed by a series of unearthly roars and yet more gunshots. And they sounded close. Too close for comfort. The atmosphere of burgeoning emotional intimacy between the pair shattered like a piece of glass, they turned to look in the direction that the sounds had come from just in time to hear the sound of someone, or something, crashing through the wall bushes that they had found themselves behind coming from that same direction. But they scarcely had the time to feel fear before the identity of the someone or something was revealed - a wide-eyed and somewhat tattered Kitsune came barreling through the growth.

"Kitsune! What on earth are you doing out here?" asked Naru.

Despite the circumstances, Kitsune shot them one of her characteristic mischievous grins. "I had a feeling you two lovebirds would try for a little late-night rendezvous tonight, so I waited until I heard Naru moving around and then I followed you guys."

"Kitsune!" shouted Naru and Keitaro together, but before they could subject her to much of a tongue-lashing for her brazen intrusiveness, Kitsune headed off the issue.

Still smiling, she said, "you guys can slap me silly later, but right now, we gotta get outta here! Come on!" Grabbing Keitaro and Naru each in one hand, Kitsune bolted, demonstrating an aptitude for the sprint that any self-respecting prankster and snooper should have. Naru managed to keep up with Kitsune's pace well enough, but Keitaro, who was rather overwhelmed by the succession of dramatic events that had taken place in the hour or so that had passed since Naru had awakened him, was more or less being dragged along by Kitsune, who still wore her squinting smile as though they were running from some practical joke that they had just perpetrated instead of the threatening sound of gunfire and primeval roars. After running a short distance, Kitsune dived them into a ditch and huddled down. A very frazzled and tattered Naru and Keitaro looked at Kitsune in bewilderment.

"Kitsune, what are you doing? What is going on here?" Said Keitaro.

The Fox giggled, still acting as though this was all some big joke to her. "Well, like I said, I followed y'all after you left Hinata. When Naru got goin' with that whole 'I love you Keitaro marry me not Motoko' sob thing, I finally thought that I was gonna see somethin.' But the two of you just stood there huggin' and all for hours, and I started to get bored. So I wandered off a bit, and you wouldn't believe what I walked into instead!"

Naru squirmed a bit when Kitsune said the bit about 'I love you Keitaro,' but before she could say anything, Keitaro pressed Kitsune on.

"What did you see?"

"Hee hee, well, I see these two fellas just sort of walking down the road. Dunno why, but something about them just caught me as strange. So I started following them instead. And would you believe it, not 10 minutes after I first saw them, this big hairy _thing_ just whips right past me faster than greased lightening and goes flying into these two guys! It pins one of them right of and bites the poor guy's face right off his head like one of those marshmallow bunny thingies! Then it looks up at the other one and snarls at him - let me tell you, I dunno what this thing was, but it sure was scary-lookin when it was mad! Anyway, this other guy pulls out a gun and shoots the monster-guy a few times. It drops to the ground, but then several others appeared out of the shadows around him, and just my luck, this guy starts high-tailing it right in my direction. That's when I decided that I'd better back off a bit myself, and it occurred to me that I should get the two of you out of here as well."

* * *

Keitaro and Naru sat staring at Kitsune not knowing what to make of her bizarre story, made all the more extraordinary by the fact that she told this tale of monsters and horror with the same cheerful disposition that she used when she spoke of Keitaro's antics or was telling some totally age-inappropriate story to Shinobu or Suu. It was Naru who broke the ensuing silence first.

"Kitsune, when we get back home, the _first _thing I'm gonna do is smash every bottle of sake that I can find. I sure wish you could go just one night with out getting totally fitz-chased and sticking your nose into other people's private business! Now we all heard those ... noises ... but I think those things you saw had more to do with your blood alchohol level than with monsters. Now whatever is going on out there has nothing to do with us, so let's just get home and we'll talk about this very thoroughly tomorrow!" She said with more than a little irritation in her voice. Equally irately, Naru stood up suddenly.

"Naru, wait!" shouted Keitaro and Kitsune together, both of them standing at the same time as well. Then, as Naru turned back to look at them, everything she saw seemed to drop into slow motion. First, from the direction they had came, the direction of the disturbance, a tall man dressed in a black trench coat from them was running directly at them at an incredible speed. Apparently seeing them, the figure raised his hand, in which was apparently a gun. Following the line of fire of this she turned to look at the space just to the side of her that was momentarily to be occupied by Kitsune, but out of the corner of her eye she saw something else. Turning in the other direction, she saw something else coming at them from the other direction, but Naru's brain would not process what she saw. It was some kind of animal, one with strikingly canine features, but it was running on just two legs. Like the figure rapidly closing from the other side, it was moving at an inhuman speed.

She remembered the other figure at the exact same moment she heard the gunshots. Her head swiveled back along the same line she had followed before, but that same space was no longer empty. Kitsune had stood up just as Naru had, but now she stood directly between the man and the beast. Continuing to move her glance in that direction, she saw the man running towards them firing his gun. At this point her perception seemed to slow down even more. A deafening roar suddenly exploded almost right behind her - the creature she had seen was now virtually on top of them, and just as the first gunshots seemed to arrive it leapt forward in an unbelievable display of strength. But they were not the first gunshots. At the same moment, Naru heard a muffled thud and felt a light, warm spray played across her face. Through a slight red haze she saw Kitsune's face. In what was a rare sight, Kitsune's eyes were open. But the expression on her face was like nothing Naru had ever seen cross the face of her old friend. Usually it was Kitsune's actions that produced expressions of disbelief on others, probably because of some inappropriate joke or prank. But now it was Kitsune who wore the expression of disbelief. Naru's eyes focused out from Kitsune's face to see a growing line of blood running down her chest from what had to be a bullet wound that lay between her left breast and her collarbone. Moving her hand over the wound, Kitsune then looked in shock at the beet-red blood that quickly covered her hand.

With a few heavy breaths, she slowly kneeled down and came to rest against the wall of the ditch that they had taken cover in. The last image of Kitsune that Naru remembered of that night was her friend sitting there, back against the side of the ditch, breathing heavily with virtually the whole upper left portion of her body soaked in her own blood, the look of disbelief and shock plastered across her face.

* * *

Suddenly, Naru's slow-motion view of events switched to high-speed. "Naru, LOOK OUT!" came a shout from her side opposite of the now downed Kitsune. Turning in that direction, she saw two blurs flying towards her. From the side of her she barely recognized the figure of Keitaro before he slammed into her with more force than she'd ever seen or felt him use on anything. The second was the creature that she had seen take off in a flying leap right before she had seen Kitsune hit by a bullet. It should have gone well over their position, but it too had been hit by bullets, and the energy of these bullets had robbed it of some of its forward inertia. Now, it was coming down right upon her. Or rather, it would have come down upon her had Keitaro not rammed her out of the way. Now it was Naru's turn to be sent flying. But the distances had been too close, and the speeds too great, and Keitaro could not get clear of the creature's path fast enough.

* * *

Motoko ran at the very limit of her own great physical abilities. Her sleep had been violently interrupted that night by terrible dreams, which had suddenly awakened her with more energy than had Tama-chan landed flat on her face. Immediately, she had sensed something was frightfully wrong with the energy aura of Hinata. The residents had all become part of Hinata's aura, and Motoko's warrior senses had learned to read the aura. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that this sort of disturbance in Hinata's energy could only mean one thing - one or more resident was in grave and immediate danger. She didn't know exactly who, or how, or why, but she thought she could sense a general direction from where the danger was coming. Trusting her own instincts, she grabbed her sword and ran. She ran for all she was worth towards that which endangered her beloved Hinata and it's residents. Then she had heard the gunshots. The unearthly roars. And the all too earthly screams. Motoko mustered every speck of Ki that she had and ran even faster.

* * *

The sickening sound of flesh and bone being crushed between impossibly powerful jaws resonated louder in Naru's ears than did Keitaro's scream. Then it was as if the sight of the creature slamming into Keitaro, its jaws making first contact with Keitaro's right shoulder, and the pair of them hitting the ground made Naru's brain catch up with everything that she had just witnessed and her own scream involuntarily burst from her lungs.

The creature then took notice of her. The creature, itself bleeding profusely from several gunshot wounds not unlike the one that had felled Kitsune only moments before, then turned away from Keitaro and advanced on her, its eyes radiating a crazed fury that left Naru paralyzed with terror. She saw Keitaro lying motionless behind it, his right shoulder a bloody mess of mangled flesh that would have been unrecognizable as part of a human body if viewed without the rest of Keitaro's body. But she had little time to ponder the sight, for the creature leapt at her with a terrifying roar. Another volley of gunshots rang out. The creature contorted in midair as the deadly projectiles struck home. It came crashing down to the ground, its ferocious and bloodstained jaws coming to rest on the ground mere inches from Naru's feet. Shock now overtook Naru, and the last thing she remembered seeing before she lost consciousness was the image of the glowing blue eyes and smoking pistol of the man that Kitsune had seen.


	3. Tomorrow is Another Day

Mercifully, none of the remaining Hinata residents, which for the moment amounted to Shinobu, Suu, and Sara, were awakened by the scene that unfolded downstairs until that which would have done them the most trauma to have seen had been shuttled away by the ambulance. Motoko had managed to revive Naru at the scene just to the point where with the help of the bloody and weakened but still conscious and ambulatory Kitsune she had managed to withdraw without further help from Motoko, who was then free to focus entirely on carrying away the nearly dead Keitaro as gently and as quickly as possible. A remarkably short time later given the state of them, the four had arrived back at the Hinata Inn. By the time they came stumbling in through the front doors, loss of blood had taken its toll and Kitsune had barely made it to a nearby couch before lapsing into unconsciousness. Naru, physically unhurt but in such a severe state of shock as to have little more left than Kitsune, unsteadily lowered herself to Kitsune's side after her friend's support had ceased and just sat there, in a near-fetal position, breathing short, shallow breaths. Motoko had gently placed Keitaro on another couch, and then had gotten on the phone.

After calling for medical help, she had also called Haruka, whom in turn had called Seta. Haruka, being closest, had arrived first, which turned out to be a blessing, for it was her who ended up containing the three young residents upstairs after they had been woken up by the ambulance siren while the casualties below were evacuated. Seta did not arrive until the ambulance was leaving, his most important immediate function was to take charge of Sara, whom, not knowing what was going on, was becoming somewhat belligerent with the fact that she was being detained against her will, while Haruka led the more docile Shinobu and the always energetic but this time cooperative Suu back to their rooms.

* * *

Keitaro and Kitsune, being by far the more endangered, had been driven off in the back of the ambulance where the medics worked feverishly to stabilize their conditions. With limited space in the back, Naru had been seated in the front passenger seat of the ambulance, where she slowly seemed to be recovering her senses. Tears poured down her cheeks and she made faint weeping sounds now. The ambulance sped towards the nearest hospital, its siren now the only sound piercing the once again silent nighttime sky.

* * *

Haruka sat at the dining room table under the only light of the overhead hanging lamp. She had seen many more things in her time than she ever spoke of, but it was now her turn to feel the weight of the full load of events catching up to her. She sat facing the two blood-soaked couches as her brain continued to absorb all that had happened. From the moment she had gotten the frantic phone call, she had been preparing herself for any sort of tragedy, for she knew that anything that could produce that sort of tone out of Motoko must be quite serious indeed. But even then she had had no idea of the seriousness of the situation, and the sight that met her eyes upon her arrival had wrecked her omnipresent aura of invincibility like a car into a brick wall.

Her nephew lay deathly still upon one couch with a gruesome wound where his shoulder once was, and Kitsune, the eldest Hinata resident, seemed little the better with her own soiled cushions beneath her unconscious form. The cigarette had tumbled from her mouth and she blinked furiously for a moment as if suspecting that what she thought she saw was merely some sort of optical illusion. But it was quite real. The medics arrived, and realizing that the noise would almost certainly awaken everyone, she had temporarily forced the images from her head and went upstairs to head off the inevitable investigation party before they could see anything . This had provided her with enough distraction to regain her image of self-control.

But now the young girls were back in bed, and Seta had run back home to stuff a quick overnight bag. Alone with her thoughts, tears began to form in the back of Haruka's eyes. Though she got rough with him at times, and only interfered with the treatment he received from the other residents when things got a little too ugly for her taste, she loved Keitaro very much. She had let things take their own course because she had wanted to make Keitaro stronger. And stronger he had indeed become. After all his trials and tribulations with the Hinata girls and other miscellaneous adventures, Keitaro had grown immeasurably as a person, as also had the girls themselves, for Keitaro had helped each and every one of them, Shinobu, Naru, and Motoko in particular, to identify their own weaknesses and find solutions to conquer them. Though one might not ever guess it by observing the beatings Keitaro frequently endured and the seeming chaos that quite often seemed to follow him around the apartments, everyone in the situation had come out all the better for it. But now ... it all might have ended with one cruel stroke of fate.

Haruka, both out of her sense of responsibility for all the residents and also her own not wanting to deal with her emotions at this time, decided that this was a moment in which they needed her to be strong, to help her younger charges get through this ordeal however it might end, she forced all thoughts out of her head, turned away from the mess in the lounge area, and closed her eyes. As is often the case for people in situations like these, she had no real conception of how long she sat there, but was eventually brought back into awareness by Seta's return. He had offered to stay the night there to help out with the difficult questions that remained to be answered in the morning, and Haruka had quickly accepted his offer. He walked over to where Haruka was sitting, his small duffel bag draped over his shoulder.

Haruka slowly stood up, raising her head to meet Seta's eyes. She and Seta shared their own intimate past, and he was one of the very few people with whom Haruka had ever willingly let down her guard and allowed herself to be completely open with, in the privacy of just the two of them at least. As such, his presence brought a much-needed relief to Haruka's tattered nerves, and she slowly and silently embraced Seta in a hug. As they stood there, still in absolute silence, 2 small patches of wetness appeared on Seta's shirt where Haruka's eyes were buried in it. Seta, in complete and somber understanding, simply closed his own eyes and nuzzled Haruka's head with his. Seta had grown very fond of Keitaro over his time here, and he had long known both Naru and Kitsune. Seta's experiences had taught him that things were never so bad - or so good - as they first seemed, and his own emotions tended not to reveal themselves until the absolute truth was known. His concern for the well-being of Keitaro, Naru and Kitsune - and everyone else at Hinata for that matter - was no less than that of Haruka, but in his eyes, there was little to mourn until he could see and touch their dead bodies with his own eyes and hands, and there was no point in fear or fret, for neither had any impact on what was to be. Instead he hoped, and he waited, and he offered what support he could for anyone else. For now, that meant providing a shoulder for an old flame to cry upon.

* * *

After about 20 minutes, Haruka gently withdrew herself from Seta's soft grasp. Though her eyes bore the unavoidable redness of emotion, the rest of her face had more or less regained the composure for which she had become famous even among such stalwarts as Motoko and Naru. "Thank you for coming, Seta," she said in her flat but sincere manner.

"I would never abandon my friends at a time like this," replied Seta, in his own manner of sincere but undramatic fashion.

"No, dedication to those you love was never your problem," said Haruka, attempting to force a smile.

"Nor was it yours."

With that, the two headed quietly up the stairs.


	4. Light at the End of the Tunnel

Shinobu awoke at her usual time of 7:30 am, the same time she got up every day so that she could make breakfast for everyone. She did genuinely enjoy cooking, and the constant praise for her work that the other residents produced after every meal had done no small favor to her very modest self-esteem. Even if she did not view food service as part of her due for being allowed to stay at the Hinata Inn in lieu of rent, she would have done so anyway out of her own good heart, not to mention mercy, for the only other resident that had expressed any willingness to do the job was Suu, and her hearty cooking could set fire to the hardiest palate with its overwhelming spiciness. Therefore, usually Shinobu set about this task with high spirits.

But this morning was different. She had heard the sound of the ambulance the night before, but Haruka and Seta had not permitted her or anyone else to see or hear what exactly was going on downstairs. Shinobu had graciously obeyed Haruka's instruction to go back to bed and had reluctantly but without argument accepted her promise of answers in the morning. Sara had thought it degrading that it was not thought that she was capable of seeing whatever was going on and had certainly let Haruka know it, but even before Seta had arrived even the intractable Sara was no match for an unamused Haruka who was not in the least bit in the mood for games. The young girl had positively fled to her adoptive father figure after tasting a piece of Haruka's wrath. Fortunately, Suu was feeling much more cooperative, and with her usual innocence and energy had bounded off back to her room when bid to do so without a fight. Shinobu, on the other hand, knew that something bad had happened, although she did not know what and to whom. She wished she did know, for she felt that the uncertain worry and fear that she was feeling now was worse that just about anything that she could have found out. However, Haruka had promised to tell them everything today, and Haruka had never lied to them.

* * *

Walking into the kitchen, she saw Haruka and Seta already awake and about. By the look of it, they had been up to some serious cleaning, and two of the couches were missing their cushions. "Haruka-san, Seta-san, good morning," she said.

"Good morning Shinobu," said Haruka.

"I hear you're the master chef around here, young lady. I look forward to seeing this for myself!" said Seta with a smile.

Any other time Shinobu either would have blushed at the compliment or hesitated with fear at having expectations placed upon her in such a manner, but her thoughts were not with breakfast on this morning. "Yes. Umm, Haruka? About what you told me last night?"

"Let us wait until the others have gathered, I'd rather not go over this more than once."

"Alright."

* * *

With that, Shinobu set about making breakfast, while Seta and Haruka exchanged looks of apprehension with one another, Haruka knowing all too well what the news was going to do to poor Shinobu.

* * *

Kitsune groggily came around in her hospital bed at about the same time breakfast was being served back at the Hinata apartments. Aside from the aftereffects of the sedatives she had been given and the ache in her upper left chest, she didn't feel too bad considering. As her brain collected itself, a doctor came into the room. "Good morning Ms. Konno," said the doctor, "my name is Dr. Hasagawa. How are you feeling?"

"Like I could really use a bottle or two of my finest sake," was the Fox's grumbled reply, giving the handsome doctor a sly wink.

Dr. Hasagawa smiled. "The only spirits you need right now are high spirits. Consider yourself under doctor's orders to stay away from alcohol completely for a few weeks. You've just been given a pretty big blood transfusion and you've had some minor surgery to repair some bone structure. Alcohol thins the blood and that's the last thing you need right now. All in all, blood loss aside, you really weren't hurt too badly and your immune system seems to be strong. But you are certainly capable of making it worse, so please do as I say."

Kitsune reached up and felt the wound on her chest, her hand delicately touching the small row of stitches that now marked the spot. She cringed slightly at the tenderness of the area. "Ow .. alright doc, you've convinced me. In that case, would you be interested in buying a case or two of some very excellent sake?"

* * *

The doctor smiled at Kitsune's humor, told her that he would be back to see her soon, and left the room. Moving to the next room over, his mood sombered a bit. He had been assigned both Ms. Konno and Mr. Urashima who had arrived at the hospital with her. He had always had an optimistic outlook for the young woman, made all the more so by her obvious high spirit, but the young man he was much more concerned about. Only twice before in his years at the hospital had he seen anyone with injuries resembling his. Both of these had been shark attacks, and the first had lost the better part of his left leg some awful scars about the left side of his upper body, and the second, only a young girl who had been swimming happily with her family, had not survived. Mr. Urashima had suffered severe bone and tissue damage to his right shoulder area, as well as several broken ribs and considerable blood loss of his own. Unlike Ms. Konno, he had not regained consciousness after his surgery, and although his condition was now stable, improvement was coming much more slowly to him than it had to Ms. Konno. Dr. Hasagawa opened the door to Mr. Urashima's room and walked in. He looked at the young man's shoulder - the reconstructive surgeons at this hospital were absolute wizards of their trade, and save for the impressive criss-cross of stitches his upper body looked remarkably good. The doctor checked all the readouts and charts for the patient, and with a look of reserved puzzlement, moved on.

* * *

"Hinata Apartments, Haruka speaking, how may I help you?"

"Good morning, this is Doctor Hasagawa from Hinata hospital. Haruka Urashima?"

"Yes."

"I have updates for you regarding the conditions of Ms. Konno and Mr. Urashima. If you'd like to come down to the hospital, we can talk."

"Can we see them?" asked Haruka.

"Mr. Urashima is still unconscious, but Ms. Konno is awake and doing very well. I'm sure she would love to see her friends."

"What about Naru?"

"Ms. Narusegawa? I would imagine you could see her too, but that's not my department. That will be up to the head of our psychological ward. I'll see what I can do for you."

"Very well, we will be down there as soon as we can. Thank you Doctor," Haruka said as she slowly hung up the phone. She turned to everyone who was just finishing up their breakfast, none of whom had eaten very much. "Alright everyone, small change of plans; we're going to go visit our absent friends at the hospital. Your questions will be answered there."

Motoko stood up. "Let's go," she said. She felt somewhat guilty for having retired early the previous night, despite the fact that Haruka had ordered her to do so. The truth was that Motoko had been exhausted by her rescue efforts and Haruka wanted Motoko to be as well rested as possible for today, when she had told the young samurai that she was to be acting apartment manager in Keitaro's absence. Motoko understood the wisdom of it all, but nevertheless it was against her nature to leave the scene of such a thing before it reached its conclusion. Haruka nodded at Motoko's words, and they, Seta, Shinobu, Suu and Sara dropped their utensils and walked out to Seta's van. "Move over pal, I'll drive," said Haruka to Seta.

* * *

The Hinata residents sat piled onto a couch in one of the hospital's conference rooms, staring intently at the figure of Dr. Hasagawa. He nodded to the nurse at the door, who then closed the door behind her as she left. The Doctor took in all their faces, and then spoke up.

"Alright everyone, let me start off by putting your minds at ease by saying that I don't have any bad news. I spoke with the head of our psychological ward, and not only can you see your friend Ms. Narusegawa, she said that you can actually take her home."

They all exchanged glances with each other that expressed their gratefulness and the Dr. Hasagawa could sense the uplifting effect that that news had had on them.

"Secondly, Ms. Konno is doing quite well, and she can go home tomorrow morning. We want to keep her for one more day for observation. Standard procedure after surgery, nothing more."

Yet another load spilled off the shoulders of the Hinata residents.

"And Keitaro?" piped up Shinobu, surprising everyone.

Dr. Hasagawa crossed his arms at the question. "Mr. Urashima's condition has been stabilized, and our reconstructive surgeons have repaired the damage to his shoulder. There will be no permanent disfigurement and he should have much less scarring than one would expect from an injury like his. His heart rate, blood pressure and brainwaves are slowly returning to normal. Unfortunately he has not regained consciousness, but he should at any time. I will of course personally contact you when that happens."

"What happened to them?" said Suu and Sara together.

Dr. Hasagawa looked at Haruka, who nodded her consent.

"We do not really know exactly what happened. There were no outside witnesses, and it is against our policy to ask victims of violence questions about what happened to them until they have sufficiently recovered. However, Ms. Konno had been shot once through her upper chest, and Mr. Urashima had apparently been attacked by some sort of animal. Ms. Narusegawa was not physically hurt but was in one of the most severe states of shock that me or my staff has ever seen."

Motoko became aware of Shinobu's tightening grip on her arm as the Doctor spoke these words. Looking down at her face, she saw tears welling up in the young girl's eyes as a look of horror spread across her face. Dr. Hasagawa noticed this too.

"But like I said, they will all be just fine, and I'd be surprised if Mr. Urashima cannot return home within the week," he said, trying to alleviate the child's fear.

Suu and Sara simply looked at each other, their faces displaying their not knowing of what to say or what to do, a rare event indeed for the most rambunctious pair.

"Thank you Doctor, for everything," Haruka said, "where did you say Naru was? I'd like to get her home."

"I've already sent for her. She will be meeting us right here in this room any minute now," was the doctor's reply. "Now," he continued, " I will leave the lot of you to yourselves for until Ms. Narusegawa arrives, if you have no more questions or concerns for me."

"I think that's all for the moment, Doctor. Thank you again," said Haruka.

"Then just remember that everything will be OK, and if there's anything I can ever do for you, just give me a call," said Dr. Hasagawa as he bowed himself out of the room.

* * *

Naru walked slowly down the hallway, accompanied by the psychologist who had seen her the night she arrived. Her face wore an unmistakable expression of sadness and exhaustion, but her movements clearly showed that she was more or less in control of herself again. As they reached their destination, the psychologist looked at Naru and said, "you gonna be alright, Naru?"

"Yeah, I think so," Naru replied weakly.

"Well then, take care, and please don't hesitate to call me if you ever need to talk," said the psychologist, patting Naru on the back, "but for now, I think you have some people who are really anxious to see you." With that, she opened the door.

"Naru!" exclaimed Suu, taking a flying leap over to her and gripping her in her classic vice-like hug.

"Take it easy on her, kiddo. She's still in need of some rest and recuperation before she'll be ready to play too rough," said the psychologist, gently breaking Suu's grip on Naru. Suu looked somewhat dejected for a moment, but quickly recovered her usual liveliness. "Aww, hurry up and get better Naru!" she said, the irrepressible, innocent spirit of the young girl bringing the first genuine smile to Naru's face that had been there in several days.

"I'll try, Suu," was Naru's reply.

"I'll leave you guys alone now. Take care." With that, the psychologist shook Naru's hand and left the room, leaving the door open behind her. Shinobu again spoke first. "Naru-sempai, I'm so glad you're OK," she said in her at-the-brink-of-tears voice as she rushed over and gave Naru a gentle hug.

"You always were one tough cookie, Naru. It's good to see ya," said Seta with a smile, putting his arm around Naru's shoulders.

"Yeah, you'll be right as rain in no time!" chimed Sara, drawing a hoot of agreement out of Suu.

Haruka smiled at the rising collective spirit, and suggested that they all go visit Kitsune before they left. This met with hearty agreement, and the group left the conference room and headed over to the patient rooms.

* * *

Even before they reached the door, they all could hear the sound of Kitsune's voice engaging someone in conversation.

"Aww, c'mon Doc, don't ya think that that would help me on my long road to recovery? I need some more excitement in my life! Come on Doc, pleeeeze!" They all heard Kitsune whine.

"Well, I know we've already had that conversation, so I'm afraid that your last idea is simply out of the question. As for the first, well, we'll see," said a male voice, and the door opened and out walked Dr. Hasagawa, nearly running into the Hinata party.

"Your friend here is quite the character. I think you guys are just what she needs right now. See ya 'round!" he said with a sheepish smile, walking away with said smile frozen on his face along with a not imperceptible blush. The Hinata residents watched him walk away and then entered Kitsune's room, closing the door behind them. Seeing the inquiring looks and raised eyebrows on the faces of her friends, Kitsune volunteered the information. "I was just asking him to take me out to dinner and then stay up all night drinking with me tomorrow when I get outta here. Is that so bad?" said Kitsune with what was for her the equivalent of an innocent smile. Then the Fox Lady saw Naru among them, and her mischievous image dropped immediately. "Naru ..." she said slowly, as if seeing her again for the first time in 20 years.

Naru walked slowly over to her friend's bed. The last time she had seen her, after all, was when Kitsune had been propped up against the side of a ditch bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound. Naru kneeled down beside Kitsune. The others could not see her face, but they saw Kitsune's eyes filling with tears. The two best friends then tightly grasped each others hands and stared into one another's eyes for a moment. Then Naru leaned over, Kitsune sat up, and they gave each other a tender hug, Naru being careful not to touch Kitsune's injury. Standing up after breaking their embrace, Naru said to Kitsune, "see you at home tomorrow."

"You try and get some rest tonight, ya hear me?" replied Kitsune.

"I will."

* * *

At that, the others went over to the bed, and soft conversation between the now nearly complete Hinata cast that lasted about 25 minutes, after which it was Haruka who suggested that they be on their way. Kitsune agreed with her, saying that she was going to be home soon enough and there was no need for them to spend an undue length of time in the depressing environment of a hospital. Haruka then led ushered everyone out the door, and after bidding Kitsune a good day, closed the door behind her.

"Aren't we going to visit Keitaro-sempai?" Asked a worried Shinobu once it became clear that they were on their way out of the hospital.

"Keitaro is sleeping right now, we should let him rest," said Motoko, before Haruka could speak, "we'll be seeing him again soon enough."

Shinobu looked up at Haruka as if for confirmation, to which Haruka nodded hers.

"Keitaro ..." Naru was heard to say quietly, and she stopped walking.

"He's going to be OK my dear, I promise," said Seta, again putting his arm gingerly around Naru and gently pushing her forward. With that, the party exited the hospital, walked over to Seta's van, and piled in, with Haruka once again assuming the role of driver.


	5. Why Question a Good Thing?

Keitaro saw himself running down the road. Or rather, he somehow thought that it was himself, even though the figure in his sight was more like something that he'd seen in horror movies. That, and he/it was moving at a speed that Keitaro would have been thrilled to achieve on a bicycle on a 45 degree downhill slant. After viewing this surreal scene for a moment, he recognized a figure along the side of the road as he/it sped by. It was Kitsune. With a sudden chill he recognized what he was seeing - this was the scene that Kitsune herself had described the night before when they were all attacked.

As this moment of realization dawned upon him, his perception changed. He now saw things through the eyes of the running creature. He noticed Kitsune in the background but paid her no heed. His focus was instead firmly locked upon the two dark figures walking in the distance. He became aware of a sense of fury as he looked upon the figures. It was as if he was on some sort of autopilot - he did not understand why he felt the fury that he did, he did not know who the figures that were rapidly growing larger in his view, and although fully aware of himself and his surroundings otherwise, he did not seem to be in control of his own actions.

With strength he never knew himself to have, he plowed into the two figures at full speed. Immediately his jaws snapped shut on the face of the figure that he had pinned beneath his considerable bulk. But just before he did, he saw the figure's face. It was man ... a man with pale white skin, glowing blue eyes and noticeably elongated canine teeth. He hissed at Keitaro before Keitaro's jaws silenced him. But before Keitaro's brain had too much time to process this, a white flash surrounded him and he suddenly again found himself running full tilt. Only this time, he was in a large open field surrounded by trees and bushes. Across from him, at a considerable but rapidly closing distance, was another "man," not unlike the one he had just killed.

Just killed? No ... this couldn't be ... Just as Keitaro's thoughts began to come together, he was horrified by the site that befell him next. He saw Naru ... suddenly appearing in the center of his field of vision, followed quickly by Kitsune and .. himself? He felt as though this sudden surge of fear should have stopped him in his tracks, but it didn't. Far from it, he suddenly took a flying leap towards the man whose shining blue eyes he could now see clearly. But the man saw him too. Raising the pistol in his hand, he fired straight at Keitaro. Keitaro knew he'd been hit, but felt no pain, feeling only his forward motion being quickly slowed by the energy of the bullets that had just slammed into his chest. Feeling strangely disappointed that he was not going to reach his target, that feeling quickly turned into one of grim satisfaction as he saw what his new, unintended target was; Naru!

But then he saw himself, with a look of fear masked by determination, push the young woman out of the way, instead placing himself in the line of fire. Keitaro, in his head, knew that it did not matter which particular human he fell upon, just so long as he could get to at least one of them ... with that thought chilling his heart as his body was moving against his own will, he saw that he was nearly upon himself. He heard his own scream as he bit down, tasting his own blood and feeling his own bones snap under the incredible force of his bite. He continued to hear his own scream until his perception once again changed - now he was the one screaming as his eyes flung open and he struggled to get to his feet, only to be pulled back down by a small bundle of cords that were attached to both his arms. As he slowly came to, he stopped screaming. He was no longer in a wide open field, no longer tearing into his own body from without, no longer screaming in pain and terror as some huge beast savaged his shoulder ... he now saw that he lay in a narrow bed, in a dark room, soaked with sweat, and with IV needles coming out of both his arms and various other connections to various other machines. He was not left alone long to try and sort things out.

* * *

The nurses on duty had been alerted by Keitaro's heart monitor, which suddenly registered a dramatic increase in his heart rate and had sent a warning to the control center. A nurse was already on her way to his room when she heard his scream. Breaking into a run, she covered the remaining distance to his room in a very short order, quickly flinging open the door to see the young man sitting up in his bed, eyes wide open, glistening with sweat and breathing as though he had just run a marathon. He sat staring straight ahead for a few moments before noticing the nurse, at which time he turned to look at her and his rapid breathing began to slow down.

"Are you alright Mr. Urashima?" Asked the nurse.

Keitaro looked down and away from the nurse, and collected himself for a moment before answering. "Yeah, I'm alright ... just a stupid dream," was his reply.

"If will please just sit tight for a little while, I will get call your doctor immediately and he should be here in about 30 minutes."

"No, that's OK. Really, I'm fine. You don't need to wake him up," said Keitaro, looking at the clock and noticing the time - 3:21 am, "I can wait until a better hour."

"I'm sure he will appreciate your consideration Mr. Urashima, but he left specific orders to notify him the minute you regain consciousness, regardless of the time or day."

"How long have I been here?"

"Only about 24 hours. I'm sure it seemed like longer though," said the nurse.

"Actually ..." began Keitaro, but as he prepared to say that it hadn't seemed so long, he realized that the last thing he could solidly remember as fact was Naru waking him up in the middle of the night and suggesting that they take a walk. He decided not to say it. "I guess I really don't know. The last thing I really remember seems like it was weeks ago."

The nurse nodded in understanding. "Distortion of time is a common side effect of the medications and sedatives you've been given. Don't worry, it will all sort itself out soon. In the meantime, hang in there and you're doctor will be here soon." With that, she asked Keitaro if there was anything she could do for him while he waited, but Keitaro politely declined. The nurse smiled, nodded and left the room.

* * *

Keitaro slowly lay back down as the nurse left and desperately tried to gather his memory. Yes, he remembered Naru being in his room that night. He could faintly remember beginning their walk. After that ... no, that was just his dream. There's no way that what he thought he remembered could have actually happened. It just could not be. He lay there searching his memory until Dr. Hasagawa arrived right on time, about 30 minutes after the nurse had gone.

* * *

"Good morning Mr. Urashima. Good to see you up and about. My name is Dr. Hasagawa. How are you feeling right now?" asked the doctor.

"Umm .. alright I guess. I just feel ... foggy. Disorientated. And I'm having some trouble sorting dreams from reality."

"How does your injured shoulder feel?"

Keitaro turned his head to look at it as if remembering for the first time that that was what brought him here. After attempting to flex the arm and gently prodding it with his other, he said, "It's strange ... it does not hurt, but it's hard to move my arm."

"That's good. You've been given some painkillers, and quite frankly, I'm impressed that you can move your arm at all. Your musculature took quite a hit."

"What happened to me?" asked Keitaro.

"You don't remember?"

"No ... or at least I don't think so ... no ..."

"Well, as I'm sure the nurse told you, your memory will be a bit foggy for a while until you're weaned off your medications. It's nothing to worry about. Anyway, I'm sure your aunt will be thrilled to hear that you have woken up. Her and possibly some of those friends of yours will be here tomorrow morning to take Ms. Konno home. I'm sure they will all be delighted to see you. In the meantime, please take it easy with that arm. You've had some pretty hefty reconstructive surgery. It would be good to try and work the muscles a little bit, but please don't overdo it. The moment you feel any pain or discomfort of any kind, please stop what you're doing. Of course, if you feel like going back to sleep, some more rest certainly won't do you any harm either. Just let me check you out real quick here and I'll leave you be."

"Thank you doctor," said Keitaro.

* * *

Dr. Hasagawa made his rounds of all the machines hooked up Keitaro, observing the readouts with a look of pleasantly surprised satisfaction. Then, he walked up to Keitaro and said, "I'm going to feel the area of your injury now. Please tell me if I cause you any pain."

Keitaro nodded, and the doctor began gently probing his shoulder area. Keitaro watched as Dr. Hasagawa's eyebrows frequently tilted upwards slightly in professionally disguised surprise. He went over the same areas twice, pressing a little harder this time, and finally Keitaro could not resist inquiring about the confused, albeit apparently pleasantly so, look on his face.

"Something wrong Doctor?" Asked Keitaro.

Dr. Hasagawa stood up and said frankly, "It's doing great. Already feels as though there is a week's worth of muscle recovery and regeneration. No obvious bruising or swelling or anything." Dr. Hasagawa gave Keitaro a look of openly being impressed. "You are even tougher than your friend Ms. Konno. I've never seen nor even heard of anyone recovering this much this fast after an injury like yours. And here I was beginning to worry about you because you didn't wake up for about 24 hours! I guess your body was just working overtime to heal itself ... well, anyway, I will leave you be for now, and see you in the morning, yes?"

Keitaro mustered a smile. "Uh, yeah, see ya then."

* * *

Dr. Hasagawa closed the door behind him as he walked out of the room. He was glad to see such excellent recovery from his most seriously injured patient, but however good that was, he had to admit to himself that he was rather unnerved by it. He had never seen this kind of recovery so quickly, not even from lesser injuries. A week's worth of healing in one day ... something just wasn't right. On the other hand, he also had to admit to himself that however unusual it may be, he couldn't think of any reason why this could be a bad thing. So the kid could heal a life-threatening would like most people heal a small paper cut. What was so wrong with that? 


	6. Complete Again

The obnoxious jingle of Naru's alarm clock jostled her out of sleep. Much to everyone's surprise, to say nothing of her own, Naru had dropped right off to sleep upon her return to the Hinata Apartments. There hadn't been any great conversation efforts on the car ride home, and although Naru had spoken it was quite clear to the others that Naru's mind and heart were not so solidly seated in Seta's van as was her body. Fortunately for Naru, Suu and Sara had done their expected duty of being the center of attention, and with their playful attention focused on Motoko and Seta she had been more or less able to avoid too many awkward questions and comments. In fact, she had even been able to laugh lightly at the antics of her younger friends, and that more than anything had encouraged the pair to keep at it. When they arrived home, Naru had thanked them all for their concern and had gone immediately to bed. Her exhaustion being obvious, no one had tried to stop her. Now, as she slowly got herself up, she could feel that a good night's sleep in her own bed at her beloved home had done her some good. She had not been kept informed as to the state of her friends while at the hospital, but she had seen Kitsune in her usual living color and Seta's words regarding Keitaro as they had left the other night had inexplicably placed her at ease, or at least had calmed her nerves enough to where she had been able to sleep unhindered by nightmares. Now it was time to bring Kitsune home, and this time, she was going to demand to see Keitaro, unconscious or not. She had been told that he was alive and doing reasonably well, and her heart knew somehow that that was true, but she had to see him with her own eyes. She had to.

* * *

Naru went downstairs to find that Shinobu was faithfully preparing breakfast as she always did. Haruka, Seta and Motoko were already seated around the table, but Suu and Sara were not up yet. She met eyes with her four friends and smiled back at them.

"Good morning Naru," they all said.

"Good morning to you as well," replied Naru.

"You look a bit better this morning. How do you feel?" asked Seta.

"I ... guess I am feeling a bit better, thank you," replied Naru truthfully. She did indeed feel as though a night back at home had recharged much of what her spirit had lost recently.

"Please join us, I'm sure a hearty breakfast will keep things moving in that direction, isn't that right Shinobu?" said Seta as he turned to look at the resident chef with a wink and a smile.

Shinobu smiled back and said, "Naru-sempai, I've made your favorite!"

Naru soaked up the atmosphere of mutual care and concern and felt herself grow a little stronger still. "Thank you Shinobu, I missed your excellent meals the other day. It's good to be home."

Haruka and Seta traded a quick glance and then Haruka spoke. "Well, I've got some good news for Naru and then some good news for everyone. First off, just in case no one told you Naru, Kitsune is coming home today. We will go pick her up right after breakfast." This drew a round of cheers from everyone, including Suu and Sara who had suddenly appeared right behind Naru, their shouts making Naru jump. Haruka's smile widened as she continued. "Second of all, Dr. Hasagawa called me last night. Keitaro woke up last night and we can go see him this morning." These words produced another round of cheers from the residents. Naru felt a surge of relief sweep through her, as though a vice clamped around her heart was just suddenly released. She was unconcerned with disguising her relief as she took her seat at the table just as Shinobu began serving the food. Everyone had noticed the instant change in Naru's aura as Haruka had spoken those words. She had seemed immediately to come closer to being her old self than she had been since Motoko's sister had first arrived at Hinata nearly a week ago. Thus with a genuinely happy outlook the residents ate their breakfast, not rushing but still at an increased pace, and when everyone finished they once again marched out to Seta's van and piled in, leaving their breakfast dishes where they sat.

* * *

Kitsune was already waiting for them in Dr. Hasagawa's office when they arrived. Everyone gave her their hugs and greetings in due order, Kitsune and Naru sharing an extra-long hug in which Kitsune was quick to notice the greatly improved spirit of her friend from the last time they met. After a short moment of reunion with Kitsune, the mood in the room was unmistakably that of anticipation for the next reunion on the list. The good doctor, sensing this, was the one who made the suggestion first. "Well everyone, how about we go pay Mr. Urashima a visit?" The suggestion drew unanimous support from the room, and the group happily filed out the door on the way to their next stop.

* * *

Dr. Hasagawa knocked on the door. "Mr. Urashima, you have some visitors who are very anxious to see you," he said.

"Come on in everyone, the feeling's mutual!" Came a chipper voice from within.

With a smile, the doctor opened the door and stumbled as Naru forced her way past her friends to be first in line. Looks of joy crossed the faces of all the Hinata residents, but on Dr. Hasagawa's face was a look of disbelief - Keitaro was on his feet, walking towards them from the windows where he had apparently been standing before. His demeanor, his physical appearance save for the stitches, and his motion showed no obvious sign that he was the same man who had been brought into his care, near death and with a badly mauled shoulder, barely over 1 day prior.

Momentarily at a loss, he said nothing before Naru burst forth and flung herself at Keitaro. "KEITARO!" She cried, the tears already flowing freely down her cheeks. Dr. Hasagawa wanted to say something about the need for Keitaro to take it easy on his injured shoulder, but before the words could be formed, Keitaro reached out to return Ms. Narusegawa's flying hug and he absorbed the full force of her arrival without so much as a stumble or grimace. In fact, he only smiled.

"It's good to see you too," he said with a chuckle. The others stood on with combined looks of surprise, happiness and disbelief painted across their faces, the mixture thereof depending on their prior knowledge of the situation. Naru simply wept into his bare chest much as she had the fateful night that had brought them here in the first place. Keitaro gently closed his eyes, nuzzled the top of her head with his own, and reached farther around her to deepen his hug. At this Naru suddenly jolted, and Keitaro quickly withdrew. He noticed a few small pinpricks on the side of her face that had been facing his "injured" shoulder, and he realized the cause. "Oh ... sorry about that. I really should see about getting these out," he said, referring to the stitches that stuck awkwardly out of his chest. Naru's big, teary eyes looked up into Keitaro's, and she managed a slight smile. "Keitaro ... you're ..."

"... yes, I'm just fine," he said with his best cheerful smile, finishing her sentence, "in fact ... I feel pretty darn good!"

Kitsune, Haruka, and Motoko now shared the look of dismay with Dr. Hasagawa. They too had seen the state of Keitaro immediately following the attack, and they didn't have to be doctors to know that no one who had been that severely hurt should appear none the worse for wear a mere day and night later. She knew that Keitaro was tough, but this ... this just wasn't possible. But there it was anyway.

Suu then took a flying leap at Keitaro, happily shouting, "Hooray! Hooray! Keitaro's all better!" The doctor this time managed to put his hand up as though to signal a halt before Suu reached her destination, and as before, Mr. Urashima caught the energetic youngster without so much as a wobble, meeting the cheerful face of Suu with one of his own. At this, Kitsune and Haruka shook off their confusion and went forward with the rest of them to surround their friend and nephew, Motoko never losing the look of rather suspicious disbelief but nevertheless coming forward to give Keitaro a hug. Dr. Hasagawa then moved forward as well, Keitaro politely breaking out of his circle of friends to meet him.

Seeing the look on the doctor's face, and also that on Motoko's, who happened to be nearest to him, he said with a chuckle, "why the long faces guys? Everything OK?"

Dr. Hasagawa gave a resigned chuckle of his own. "I ... um, am just ... impressed ... by your speedy recovery, that's all. But it's good to see you on the ... well, apparently, mended," he corrected the choice of words as he took a look at the lines of stitches on Keitaro's chest. Behind them showed no sign either of the horrific injury he had suffered nor the neater lines of the corrective surgery. At this sight his jaw dropped in absolute dismay.

The mood of overwhelming joy had been somewhat dulled at this point, and Keitaro, sensing this, wanted to try and stem the loss. He reapplied his best cheerful face. "Hey, all thanks to you Doctor. Thank you very much," he said as he shook Hasagawa's hand.

"Yes, thank you," added Haruka, gathering nods of agreement from everyone. This did indeed to put a stop to the declining mood in the room, and Hasagawa himself suddenly became aware of the situation.

Though he was still at a total loss for an explanation to Keitaro's near-spontaneous healing of a near-fatal wound, he decided that spoiling the mood would serve no purpose for anyone. Putting on his own best cheerful face, he said, "well, it wasn't just me. Our whole staff makes this sort of thing possible, I'm just the director."

"Umm ... does this mean that Keitaro-sempai can come home with us?" piped in Shinobu.

Dr. Hasagawa stumbled over his own thoughts, unsure of how to handle such an ... impossible situation. His professionalism came forward, however, and produced an answer. "Well, why don't you all give me a few minutes alone with Mr. Urashima here, and I'll get back to you on that."

The others agreed with their enthusiasm once again on the upswing. Even Sara, who rarely gave Keitaro a second though unless it was to hit him over the head with some heavy archeological artifact from Seta's collection, shot him a genuine thumbs-up and wink as she brought up the rear of the human train out the door.

Keitaro returned the gesture with some surprise of his own, this being about the first friendly gesture he could remember receiving from Seta's feisty young charge. Turning to face Dr. Hasagawa after the door closed, a more serious, though still lighthearted, look appeared on his face. "Umm ... is everything OK Doc?" He asked.

Dr. Hasagawa regarded his patient with a friendly but totally serious tone. "Mr. Urashima ... do you still not remember what happened to you?"

Keitaro's gaze shifted. "Well, no, I don't think so, though admittingly I haven't given it much thought since last night."

"Do you want to know?"

"Yes."

"You were apparently attacked by some sort of animal. You showed up here at the hospital with that shoulder of yours looking like ground beef. You were nearly dead."

Keitaro's expression changed into one of somber realization, but he nodded the doctor on.

"In all my years of profession, I've only seen two other patients whose injuries resembled yours, and they had been attacked by sharks. One died, and the other took many months of healing, rest and intensive physical therapy before he was able to more or less resume a normal life. You ... this ... I am totally at a loss to either explain or understand how you recovered so completely and so quickly. It should be a medical impossibility. But here you stand."

Keitaro nodded for the doctor to continue.

"However, regardless, I cannot see any reason why this is cause for particular alarm. You are, after all, impossible on the upside rather than the downside. I am going to examine you now, and if you are indeed as mended as you appear, then there is no reason to keep you here and I will release you to your friends. But I have a favor to ask of you."

"What's that?"

"Bear in mind that I ask this favor not only out of my own curiosity, but also out of concern for you, just in case there is something going on here that we cannot at this time see."

"Thank you Doctor. Please continue."

"If I release you tonight, I would ask that you keep in touch with me, and perhaps be willing to allow me to examine you again in one week's time. Also, to please notify me if you have any problems of any kind whatsoever. Would you be willing to do that?"

Keitaro's mood lightened again. "Of course. It's the least I could do," he added with the offer of another handshake, which Hasagawa readily accepted.

* * *

After a short while, the door opened again to reveal a fully dressed Keitaro and a Dr. Hasagawa with discharge papers in his hand. They both stood smiling, and to the expectant faces of the Hinata residents, the Doctor said, "Mr. Urashima is all yours." 


	7. I Have Waited Long Enough

Keitaro lay back in his bed, eyes closed, arms behind his head, soaking in a feeling of serenity that calmed and relaxed him right down to his foundation. This, his first night home, was the first night of the new moon, and such a hypnotizing cloak of peaceful darkness embraced Hinata in its touchless grasp. He and Naru had been the last of the residents to turn in for the evening save for Haruka, who stayed behind to close down the place a bit, after what had ended up being an entire day of fun and friendship. The three survivors of the brutal attack had exchanged tearful, heartful but joyous hugs with each other upon returning to their beloved Hinata Apartments, a triangle that soon grew into a much larger circle as everyone else was drawn into it. At first, the gentle weeping of joy and relief had overtaken everyone, no one wanting to say so for absolute certainty but more than one claiming to be pretty sure that even a tear or two from Seta had laid itself among those from the rest of the residents. Certainly no one else refrained from contributing. As the light conversation brought on by settling down kicked in, the weeps slowly evolved into lighthearted giggles, snickers and cheerful banter, which as Suu and Sara got into full swing of the mood and began to unleash their antics in earnest, eventually ended up as roaring laughter, blaring music and dancing, while Shinobu and Seta had whistled themselves away to the kitchen to churn out everyone's favorite snacks.

Much to everyone's surprise, not the least of which her own, Kitsune had resisted the call of her now-neglected sake racks throughout; instead, she danced as shamelessly as she would otherwise have drank, eventually taking over the stage from her younger roommates as they were put to staring in silent, blushing embarrassment at the riské, rhythmic gyrations of the eldest resident's lithe figure. Naru had caught Keitaro staring in awe at the Fox's performance, but instead of him getting a nosebleed and Naru battering him through a few walls, the two had simply met eyes and laughed merrily along with it. Shinobu had seemed a bit nervous when Kitsune had begun her dance, remembering all too well what usually happened when Naru caught Keitaro so much as thinking about another woman, but she too joined in the laughter when the scenario was for the first time concluded peacefully. All day and all night the fun and antics had raged unchecked, until one by one, beginning with Shinobu and generally moving up the age chart, the partygoers had finally begun to tire and bow themselves out to their beds, until only Keitaro, Naru and Haruka were left downstairs. The pair, somewhat tired themselves, sat quietly snuggling on a couch, listening to the now peaceful melodies that the apartment's sound system cranked out. At the end of the album, it had been Keitaro who had suggested that they too call it a night. Naru, lightly blushing, had agreed, and after thanking Haruka for closing up shop in Keitaro's place, they had retreated to their respective rooms, where Keitaro now lay.

* * *

He lay there comfortably, listening to the same album of soul-resting melody that he had brought back with him to his room, when, at the point when he was nearing slumber, a familiar voice jostled him back into awareness.

"Keitaro?"

Keitaro slowly sat up and opened his eyes, and the sight that greeted them was that of Naru, again blushing visibly even in the near darkness and with her eyes glistening with tears, kneeling beside him in her nightgown, her head a mere foot from his own as she once again stared into his eyes. "Naru ..." he said, sensing something from his dear Naru that he had never sensed before. But before he could say anything more, Naru flung her arms around Keitaro's neck and pulled their lips together in a passionate kiss. Also for the first time, Keitaro did not doubt, ponder, question, or otherwise diminish the moment in his head. Rather, in a moment, he merely returned Naru's effort and put his own arms around her neck, adding his strength to the force holding them together. The two locked lips for a good 5 minutes before Naru gently pulled away just enough to speak, their foreheads still nuzzling one another.

"Keitaro .. I love you. I love you so much," she said, the familiar tears now flowing freely down her face, "I waited so long to say it and then I almost lost you forever but I can't lose you I love you so much Keitaro ..."

Keitaro's own tears now mixed with hers as he gently put his finger to her lips, which stopped the ramble of words that had begun to spill from her mouth. "Naru ... I love you too. I would rather die myself than live without you ..."

At those words Naru reconnected her lips to his, and the pair slowly lowered back into Keitaro's bed.

It was fortunate that Keitaro had not thought to turn off his stereo, for the soft droning of the music camouflaged other soft and peaceful sounds coming out of his room which, should they have reached the ears of Kitsune, or any other of the residents for that matter, would certainly have added quite the finale to an already extraordinary day.

* * *

Keitaro was slowly drawn out of his state of complete and total peace by the strange sensation that he was being watched. He slowly opened his eyes became aware that he and Naru were curled up with each other underneath his covers like a couple of cats. At the same time, he became aware that nowhere on his body registered the sensation of cloth against cloth. But he most certainly registered the sensation of skin against skin. He, and Naru, were .. naked? He could not help but start before his memory provided him with the explanation of the situation. But by then it was too late. His sudden jump had pulled the light-sleeping Naru back into the world of the awake, and he watched pass over her face the same rapid-fire sequence of realizations and recollections that had just crossed his own. Upon meeting his eyes, Naru simply smiled, reached up and gently stroked his face with her hand. But as Keitaro's eyes tracked her hand's movement, his glance inevitably moved above the line of Naru's face, towards the door. Though he had wanted to return Naru's look of pleasantness, what he above her line of sight instead pasted a look of horror on his face. Naru, seeing this, looked puzzled, and rolled over to see the cause of Keitaro's woe. Upon rolling over, she too froze like a deer in the headlights of a car, her face drawing an impression of horrified surprise.

At the same moment, the couple shot to a sitting position as though they had attempted to lay down on a bed of nails. Meeting them eye to eye, gaze to gaze were the equally surprised faces of Suu, Sara and Shinobu. As the complete memory of the previous evening simultaneously decloaked in the minds of Keitaro and Naru, Naru, in her suddenly multiplied discomfort at seeing her 3 youngest roommates at this particular moment, let slip Keitaro's blanket which she had been holding around her. This promptly slipped below her bustline before she could catch it, which seemed to confirm the pair's memory of their dress status. Both of them seeing this, their faces turned beet-red as they turned to face each other, each hoping to find the solution to the situation in the eyes of the other.

"Sempai ..." squeaked Shinobu, her hands curled up at her mouth and her eyes filling with tears.

"This .. is ... oh my ..." added Sara

"Keitaro, Naru, look how red your faces are! Do you need to go back to the hospital?" asked Suu.

Keitaro and Naru shifted their gaze momentarily to the young girls, then back to each other. Then Naru, seizing the initiative, grabbed the blanket that was partially covering them and flung it over their heads. The pair quickly scattered their eyeballs around each other and their temporary shelter.

"Oh boy ... how do we get out of this one?" whispered Keitaro, a sheepish smile now gracing his blushed-out face.

Naru matched his look for embarrassment, and whispered back with a sheepish smile of her own, "Umm ... run for it now and figure it out later?"

"Sounds good to me."

Neither had noticed any item of their clothing within the perimeter of Keitaro's blanket, so they both gathered up two handfuls of blanket material and looked at each other again, teeth clenched in a combination nervous anticipation and nervous giggling, as they silently counted to 3 together.

One ...

"Hey ... umm ... what do you guys think you're doing?" asked Sara, trying to sound tough as she usually did but the uncertainly in her voice of what to do in this situation being clear.

Two ...

"Urashima-sempai, Naru-sempai, you ... you guys are ..." came Shinobu's wavering voice.

Three ...

With a yell of exhilaration, Naru and Keitaro leapt up from their crouching position and charged the doorway, holding Keitaro's blanket over themselves like a big ghost costume for two. Reacting instinctively to the sight of a large object charging right at them, Shinobu and Sara leapt to either side of them while Suu jumped out of the way vertically, swinging from the doorway as she watched the strange scene run below and behind her out the door and down the hallway. Drawn out by the commotion, Kitsune and Motoko had come to the staircase, only to see Keitaro's blanket zip past them, both spectators narrowly managing to stop their decent down the stairs without blundering into the blanket's path. But they recognized the blanket, and what's more, they recognized the voices that laughed and hooted from within it.

"That was Naru ..." said Kitsune as the object whipped by them.

"And Urashima ..." said Motoko, unsure whether or not she should take any action. Responding to a quiet noise behind them, Motoko and Kitsune turned to see Suu, Sara and Shinobu standing just behind the stairway, the look on Shinobu's face speaking volumes to Kitsune, who promptly broke out with a hearty laugh.

"Well well well," she said, as her eyes narrowed and her smile seemed to stretch across the whole of her face, "it seems our little lovebirds have finally given themselves to love!"

* * *

Keitaro and Naru were not seen again until near dinnertime. Somehow, after fleeing out the door with nothing but Keitaro's blanket between them and the great outdoors, they had managed to sneak back into their rooms, put some clothes on, and sneak back out undetected by anyone. Not that anyone was particularly looking for them - much to the horror of the poor, thunderstruck Shinobu, Suu and Sara had, after Keitaro and Naru had fled his room, gathered up their clothes and Suu had put Keitaro's pants and shirt on over the school uniform that she usually wore and began chasing Shinobu around, doing her Keitaro impersonation and saying, "Come here Naru, I love you I love you!" This scene did well to attract the attention of the other residents; Kitsune and Sara laughing hysterically, Shinobu wailing piteously as she tried to escape, Seta simply smiling and saying something about how cute this was, and everyone else doing some combination of watching, giggling and trying to get on with their normal routines, and eventually a rather subdued Motoko grabbed Suu by Keitaro's shirt, which was naturally rather baggy on the small girl, and had ensured that Shinobu had escaped to the safety of her locked bedroom before attempting to remove Keitaro's clothing from her, at which time Suu began saying such things as, "Oh Naru, yes I love you too!" This both caused Motoko to cringe and blush and saw Kitsune and Sara on the ground clutching their sides with laughter. But eventually the kendo master succeeded in stripping Suu down to her own clothing, at which time she bounded off with glee to go play with her mechanical devices.

* * *

Around lunch time, Shinobu cautiously peered out her door before whisking herself down to the kitchen to make lunch. After the meal, Kitsune had finally broken down and made a dash for her sake reserves, only to find that Haruka had quite securely locked the cabinets up. Consoling the heartbroken Fox and sternly reminding her of her doctor's orders was the next event that captured the attentions of the group. Haruka and Shinobu took charge of this situation, the former threatening to "persuade" Keitaro to ban alcohol from the Hinata Apartments altogether if she so much as thought she smelled it on Kitsune's breath before Dr. Hasagawa gave her clearance to do so. This at first caused Kitsune to recoil in fear, but then reminded her of her proposal to the doctor, and she promptly called him and pitifully groveled to him to take her out. This spectacle went on for a good 15 minutes before Kitsune had come back into the lounge, positively glowing and with a big thumbs up. This drew a chuckle from the resident body, Motoko quickly shooting her hand over Suu's mouth when it became clear to her that the mischievous youngster was about to alter her previous impersonation on the subject of love to fit the new players. All of these things kept everyone pretty well tied down.

* * *

After that, they had all gone their own ways until evening. About 45 minutes before dinner, Keitaro and Naru had reappeared. No one had seen them come in, and although they both did their best to act normal, neither managed to contain their blushes whenever they crossed paths with Shinobu, Sara or Suu. The first meeting between Keitaro and Shinobu was especially awkward, the younger wavering and chattering hesitantly as he had approached her, the elder smiling in his embarrassment, patting her on the shoulder and telling her how hungry he was and how much he looked forward to her dinner.

* * *

The residents gathered around the table as usual when the appointed time rolled around. Naru and Keitaro sat opposite of one another. Dinner went much as it always did. Everyone traded light conversation about various things and sometimes reflecting happily on particular moments of the previous night, only Shinobu catching the look that Naru and Keitaro sneaked at each other the first time the words "last night" were mentioned - both of them made a visible suppression of a smile and looked back at the speaker. At one point Haruka asked Keitaro and Naru if they had gotten back to studying yet.

"Not yet," admitted Keitaro, who then turned to Naru and asked, "you up for a little studying tonight, Naru?"

"Good idea. Guess it has been a few days since that was at the top of our minds, hasn't it?" Replied Naru.

An evil grin flashed across Kitsune's face. "Yes, you two should definitely get back to your studying. Remind me which one of you is taking the anatomy class?" She said with a wink as she elbowed Keitaro in the ribs. Keitaro and Naru both froze, their faces almost instantly turning a bright shade of red. They both sat there paralyzed with embarrassment, too fearful even to move their eyes for fear of seeing situational recognition in the faces in anyone else (they had not, after all, been able to see through Keitaro's blanket during this morning's getaway, and thus previously unaware that anyone other than the three youngest residents had caught them in their private moment), Keitaro making that "ah ...ah" sound that he made whenever he had been cornered with an embarrassing thing by any of the residents in the past, and Naru making the soft, broken laughing sounds that she made when under similar circumstances. Haruka's eyebrow lifted for a moment, then lowered as she emitted a quiet chuckle. "Well ... a good education is invaluable. You two study hard," she said in her usual quiet, stoic voice. Those words caused both of the spotlighted individuals to drop their chopsticks and turn to look at the slyly smiling Haruka, every drop of blood in their bodies now appearing to be in their faces. Perhaps figuring that the pair had now suffered enough, she now sent them an exit strategy. Standing up and piling her dishes, she said, "Shinobu, I hate to miss out on your dessert, but I am going to run a few errands before the store closes. Anyone want to come along for the ride?" Keitaro and Naru's hands shot up, no other aspect of their expressions changing.

Haruka smiled. "We'd better get going."

Keitaro and Naru stood up, each managing a somewhat strained "good evening" before marching in line behind Haruka. Everyone else stayed put, at a loss for words.


	8. The Last Days of Normality

Haruka had been kind enough to take her sweet time while on the errands of the previous night, taking the long way home after the store had closed. Engaging Keitaro and Naru in casual conversation all the while, she managed to sooth over their fluster and by the time they returned home, everyone had dissipated and gone their own ways for the night. The pair graciously thanked Haruka for the getaway, and after Keitaro had taken leave, Naru vowed vengeance against Kitsune for her the "scene she caused at dinner," to which Haruka had smiled kindly, "I don't think you give the others their due credit, Naru. We all new this time would come, and it only makes sense that the two of you would grow closer after the sort of ordeal you've just went through. Even Motoko understands that. Kitsune was just being Kitsune. You of all people should know that. The reactions you get from the others are more along the lines of that surreal feeling that one feels when something that they have anticipated for so long finally happens than anything else. Indeed, most of them have in some way or another been trying to help the two of you along, so you can hardly blame them for feeling close to the situation," she said with a wink. Haruka's soft and sensible words disarmed Naru's anger towards her friend, and she too smiled as she gave Haruka a hug. "Thank you Haruka. For everything."

"Nonsense. You are all like my extended family, and I care about all of you. It was no effort at all."

* * *

The next morning came and went almost like normal. Neither Keitaro nor Naru encountered anything on the faces or the tongues of any of their fellow Hinata residents that could be called unfriendly. Even Motoko, who had for the majority of Keitaro's time at the Hinata Apartments been the most extreme in her opposition to him and most especially the idea of him and Naru getting together, had merely given the two a polite bow and a small but sincere smile the first time their paths crossed that morning, and Shinobu, though her demeanor was still somewhat shaky, had delivered to the two her best smile and served breakfast with her usual merriness, even if it did seem just a little bit forced this particular morning.

* * *

After breakfast, Keitaro and Naru excused themselves on the grounds that they still had much catching up to do on their studies. Yet another evil grim crept onto Kitsune's face, but this was thrown into fast reverse by the icy Look of Death shot to her by Naru as Keitaro made the announcement, and Kitsune wisely said nothing. Seta and Haruka both followed Keitaro and Naru out of the dining room shortly thereafter, likewise claiming some catch-up work to do. Shinobu dutifully took care of the breakfast mess, Motoko went up to the roof for her usual training session, Sara and Suu took off on their own business that was anyone's guess, and Kitsune decided to walk into town to find something to do.

* * *

Keitaro and Naru sat quietly at Naru's table, both intently focused on the chaotic pile of papers and books that lay spread out before them. They had now been studying for the better part of three hours. Naru was impressed - Keitaro had stayed focused the entire time, the only words he spoke being when he and Naru went over something together or when he would offer to go refill their juice cups as they repeatedly emptied over the course of the session. Naru smiled to herself - things just kept on looking up! Strange how being nearly killed by a monster had suddenly imparted into Keitaro superior study skills. Then again, there were too many strange things about this whole incident, to say nothing about the things that were happening after the fact. Who'd have ever guessed that SHE would have been the initiator the first time they ... Naru blushed slightly and tried to get her focus back onto her studies.

"Everything alright, Naru?" Keitaro's voice visibly startling her. "Sorry," he said with a sheepish grin, seeing her jump.

"It's Ok ... yes, everything is fine. My mind was just wandering ..."

"Well, maybe we should take a break. We've been at this for a while now, perhaps our brains could use a rest."

Naru smiled at the suggestion. "I have to admit Keitaro, I'm impressed by your newfound study skills. Since when could you sit still for hours on end for anything, let alone studying?" She said with a wink.

Keitaro laughed modestly. "I dunno. I can't explain it, but I've just been feeling sharp as a razor ever since I got home! I just feel like ... GRRRRR! ... like I'm ready to take on the world!" He noticed Naru's raised eyebrows and shrank back down to his study position. "I'm sorry. I just can't seem to help it," he said, laughing sheepishly again.

Naru smiled back at him. "Yes, let's take a break."

* * *

The pair strolled out of Naru's room, cheerfully bantering back and forth about nothing in particular. In doing so they almost ran smack into Shinobu, who had apparently just been on her way in to bring them some more refreshments. "Shinobu ... Hi!" said Naru and Keitaro, almost in sync.

"Keitaro-sempai, Naru-sempai, I just thought you might want a snack ... were you just leaving?"

"We are just taking a little break, that's all. We were thinking about taking a little stroll to get some fresh air," said Keitaro.

"Yeah, why don't you come with us, Shinobu?" Threw in Naru, smiling cheerfully.

"Umm ... well ... sure, I guess, if I'm not imposing ..." said Shinobu meekly, the way she always did when she wanted something but did not want to ask for it. They were both wise to her ways.

"We'd love to have you Shinobu. I'm sure you're deserving of a break yourself. Come on!" Said Keitaro as he put his arm around the young cook. Naru went around to the other side of Shinobu and put her arm around her as well. Shinobu looked up at them with her big puppy eyes shining her pleasure up at her elders. Meeting with only smiles in doing so, she finally added her own smile to theirs, and the trio strolled happily out the front door.

* * *

"So how are things going for you these days, Shinobu? Seems like we never talk anymore! How's school?" Said Naru, the three friends now some distance from the apartments.

"Oh, school is going pretty good. My grades are pretty high these days too." Shinobu answered with a modest but nevertheless proud smile.

"Good, good, we knew you could do it," said Keitaro in praise of her. Shinobu played it down modestly.

"I owe it to all of you, sempai. Without your support and help, I'd be nowhere."

"We all help each other out, Shinobu. That's what's so great about this place!" Said Keitaro, "why, without Naru here, I'd be totally up the creek myself! ... Oh, and Shinobu?"

"Yes, Sempai?"

Keitaro looked up at Naru, then back down at Shinobu and gave her a big, friendly smile. "You don't have to call us 'sempai.' We're all friends here, right?"

Shinobu smiled meekly back up at him, and the three kept on walking.

* * *

By the time the trio returned to the Hinata Apartments it was nearly lunchtime. Shinobu's panic at being late to make lunch was headed off by Keitaro and Naru claiming responsibility first for going on such a long walk, and the three made lunch together.

* * *

Later, Keitaro and Naru had done some more studying, and Kitsune had come back from town with a disheartened look on her face, having blown every last yen she had taken with her on gambling but, she promised, none at all on alcohol. Everyone did their own thing for the rest of the night.

* * *

But it seemed as though Naru and Keitaro's breakthrough with one another was not the only relationship that was to come out of the occasion stronger than before. Seta put one of this right-hand men in charge of his excavations, and he stayed on to help Haruka manage the tea shop. Within a few days Haruka and Seta were much like Keitaro and Naru in that they were almost always seen together. Kitsune finally got Dr. Hasagawa to take her out on the eve of the lifting of her alcohol restriction, which came one week after the surgery. Keitaro made good on his promise to see the Doctor again a week after his release from the hospital, an effort made easy by Kitsune's inviting Hasagawa over to the apartments that night before they left. After the meal, Keitaro and Hasagawa went on a short walk. The Doctor saw no real need to examine the young man again, given his obvious state of health and full vouches from everyone that Keitaro was in ship-shape. During her voucher while they were all sitting around the table having tea, Kitsune had started to say something about asking Naru about Keitaro's condition because of her much greater knowledge of his physical condition, but her words were cut short when a saucer flung by a scowling Naru bounced off her forehead and knocked the Fox out of her seat. This drew shy, blushing laughter out of Keitaro, some meek chuckles out of Shinobu and Hasagawa, and varying degrees of genuine amusement from the others. The doctor had taken one quick look at Keitaro's shoulder, but had seen what he come to expect to see in the complete absence of any sign whatsoever that this was the same shoulder that a week before had come to him looking as though it had been run through a meat grinder. Keitaro himself admitted to the doctor that he occasionally had bizarre dreams or image flashes that were seemingly related to the incident but that were also hard to make heads or tails out of, but other than that he was feeling better than ever. The Doctor and his former patient had shook hands, and then he and Kitsune had left for the evening. The two of them began seeing each other on a semi-regular basis after that.

Haruka and Seta also took leave at that point, setting out in Seta's van and ending up back at Haruka's place. Keitaro and Naru stayed up for a while goofing off with Suu and Sara, while Motoko went upstairs for some pre-bedtime meditation, and Shinobu courteously bowed herself out and went to bed early. After about an hour and a half of play, Keitaro and Naru went together to Naru's room where both spent the night.

* * *

And so did the next couple weeks go by. It was not until the last night of the gibbous moon that this peaceful pattern was to be first broken. 


	9. And So It Begins

Naru rose out of bed with a refreshing yawn and stretch. Sitting at the foot of her bed for a moment as she took a few deep breaths and shook of the last vestiges of sleep, she looked over at Keitaro and couldn't help but snicker. Sure, he had discovered some previously hidden reserve of strength, energy, focus and grace in the past month that had allowed him to keep up with Suu at her most energetic playfulness, to go about his normal housekeeping routines with impressive zeal, to study so intently as to usually make Naru the one who would call for a break, and to virtually eliminate his old nemesis of clumsiness and absent-mindedness. But some things about her love had not changed much. He still was loathe to get out of bed in the morning. She decided to leave him be for now. She had, after all, gotten up a little early, and breakfast was still an hour off.

* * *

"Mornin' Naru!" Came Kitsune's voice as Naru walked past her open door.

"Good morning to you too, Kitsune," replied Naru, redirecting herself into her friend's room. "What are you up so intently this morning?"

Kitsune smiled. "Hasagawa and I have got big plans today. There's this all-day wine tasting and luncheon that kicks off today at around 10 that we're going to. He will be here to pick me up right after breakfast. Gotta look my best!"

"Oh dear, you're taking the good doctor out to drink wine all day? I didn't think you'd be able to corrupt him so quickly," said Naru with a wink.

"Look who's talking, Naru-darling ... Keitaro's bed has a layer of dust on it thicker than the blanket," Kitsune playfully shot back.

Naru raised her eyebrow and laughed. "Touché." Naru and Keitaro finally becoming lovers had really ceased to be an item with the other residents. Even Motoko and Shinobu had since lost any apparent sign of discomfort with the situation. But that certainly didn't mean that it was taboo for the occasional joke. It just meant that they were now met with smiles and laughs all around, instead of being spotted with embarrassed, angry, or otherwise less-than-amused faces. The two friends traded banter for a short while, then Naru went downstairs to help Shinobu make breakfast.

* * *

Breakfast passed without any noteworthy occurrences. The usual casual and friendly conversations had taken place, and Hasagawa had arrived shortly thereafter to collect Kitsune. Naru and Keitaro followed what had become their norm and helped Shinobu take care of the breakfast mess. Shinobu expressed her appreciation for the help but no longer protested too much when the pair assisted her with her work. The pair stayed around and chatted with the young cook for a while, while Motoko had gone off for her usual morning training and Suu and Sara had scooted off as well. Eventually, Naru and Keitaro excused themselves to go study, and Shinobu went about her own daily business.

* * *

It ended up being a remarkably quiet day. Kitsune and Hasagawa did not end up coming back that that night, the Fox calling from Hasagawa's place late in the evening to inform that she would be staying there for the night. Haruka and Seta had not been to the apartments at all that day, Seta calling in the afternoon to check up on Sara and just to say Hi. Early in the afternoon Shinobu and Suu had gone out to play with some of their friends from school after Sara had gone over to the teahouse to spend the day with Seta. Motoko stayed home but for the most part she left Keitaro and Naru to their own devices, though the three took lunch together. They all chipped in to make the meal in the absence of the usual cook, and after they had chatted for a short time the aspiring Tokyo U students went back to working towards that goal and Motoko took a break from her own form of studying and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

* * *

"Hey Keitaro?" Came Naru's voice.

Looking up from his textbook, Keitaro regarded his companion with a friendly smile. "Yes Naru?"

"Can we take a little break and go for a walk? I know you could probably keep going all night but I could sure use some fresh air."

Keitaro answered by snapping his book shut. "Some fresh air does sound good. Let us be gone."

* * *

It was a very nice evening. The sun shone lightly through the thin clouds on the horizon as it moved slowly towards setting. The temperature was perfect. A delightful, refreshing, warm breeze massaged the spirits of the young couple. The two walked for hours, not paying much attention to the passing of time as they enjoyed one another's company, happily chatting, running around and having a good old time just like they had seen Suu and Sara do many a time before. By the time they realized just how long they had been at this, the sun was nearly down. Smiling sheepishly at each other, they decided that they should probably head back.

They had walked pretty far in their cheerful bliss, and by the time they were nearing home, only the nearly-full moon lit their path. Their conversation had slowed by this point, and aside from an occasional comment on this or that the two now walked in silence. Keitaro was feeling rather strange, and indeed Naru had noticed a change in his demeanor ever since right around the time the sun had gone completely down. She could not really identify it but she put it down to simple exhaustion - not even he could keep up that sort of energy forever.

Suddenly, when they were almost within eyeshot of the Hinata Apartments, Keitaro stopped abruptly, putting out his arm and stopping Naru as well. She was visibly startled by the move. "Keitaro? What's wrong?" She asked, with an audible worry in her voice.

Keitaro merely stood there, dead silent, slowly moving his gaze around them as if looking for something.

"Keitaro?" Said Naru again, "what's wrong?" Fear now clearly present in her voice.

Keitaro remained silent for another minute or so, and then said in a deadly serious voice that Naru had never heard out of him before, "something is coming."

Naru clung to Keitaro's arm as she followed his gaze to a small clearing that lay off to the left of the direction in which they had been walking. Keitaro stared intently at the two silently approaching figures approaching them from the clearing. He knew who - or rather what - the figures were, although he wasn't sure how he knew. He also had an inexplicable feeling that they had come for him, to take him with them, and he suspected that they were prepared to do so by force in necessary. Slowly the two figures came into full view, and they reminded Naru eerily of the man she had seen on the night of the attack.

"Get back to the Hinata Apartments, Naru," said Keitaro in that same, strange voice.

Naru's heart was now racing furiously, this scenario was beginning to give her a terrible sense of Deja Vu of an incident that she had thought was behind them. "Keitaro, let's ..."

"Go," he said, almost angrily, cutting her off.

"Keitaro, what are you doing? Let's get out of here together! Why are you ..."

"Go ..." he said again, this time in a low, almost guttural voice, as he turned to look at her. Naru looked back at him and recoiled in horror. Keitaro's eyes had gone a blank shade of gray and they stared wide at her like some sort of demon. She nearly tripped as she stumbled backwards, her head shaking slowly in shock as her face drained of blood.

"Keitaro ..." she said weakly.

"You must get away. Right now," Keitaro once more in a voice more like his own, but in doing so opening his mouth and allowing Naru a glimpse of a set of small but sharp-looking fangs. Naru blinked her eyes in disbelief. She was terrified, but not so much so to have any desire to leave Keitaro behind in this sort of a situation. Seeing the look on her face, Keitaro's expression lightened and his eyes momentarily flashed back to their normal color. "Please Naru, go home ..." he said, himself now sounding almost fearful.

The sound of fear in his voice gave Naru a sudden resolve. Still obviously afraid and confused, but with a determination that Keitaro knew all too well, she said, "I will not leave you Keitaro."

Keitaro regarded this with uncertainty, but he did not have too long to think about it. The two figures had by now closed the range and were now only about 10 meters away. Turning to face them, he took a few steps forward, putting himself between them and Naru. The two men stopped a few feet ahead of Keitaro, and silently studied him for a moment. They were not large men, not much bigger than Keitaro himself, but something about them was very intimidating.

"Do you know who we are?" Asked one of the strangers in an unexpectedly calm and unthreatening manner, breaking the deathly silence.

"Yes," answered Keitaro, his voice cool but hinting at unpleasant anticipation.

"Then you know why were here."

"Yes."

"Then shall we?" Asked the second man in a no-nonsense sort of way, motioning for Keitaro to come with them.

Keitaro looked at Naru, who was watching this with ever increasing pessimism for the immediate future.

"Keitaro ... who are these guys?" She asked when her gaze met his.

"I ... I can't explain it right now ... just please ..." began Keitaro, looking away from her in the direction opposite of the two men.

"Forgive my haste, but we've got our orders and I think you know how important it is for all of us that those orders are fulfilled, so let us get going," said the first man, interrupting Keitaro but still speaking in a not-unfriendly voice but less calmly this time.

"I'm not going. I don't want any part of it. It's got nothing to do with me," said Keitaro angrily, returning his gaze to the strangers.

The two men gave a snort, and the first one said, "I'm not sure we understand each other my good man. Now we can do this easy or we can do it hard, but either way, you're coming with us," he said, the neutral nature of his voice now giving way to slight anger of his own.

"Keitaro, what's going on? Who are you guys and what do you want with Keitaro?" Asked Naru rather urgently to Keitaro and the two men respectively.

The first man, seeming the spokesperson for the two, regarded Naru with the annoyance that one would give a nagging small child. "It would be most wise of you to run on home my dear lady, you are in way over your head here."

Naru felt a small charge of anger, both for being addressed in such a manner by a complete strangers and because she was not keen on seeing Keitaro led off them. "Look mister, I don't know what this is all about, but why don't you two weirdoes go bother someone el..."

Naru's words were interrupted by two things that happened almost simultaneously. The first was her seeing the first man giving her an angry look before he shot his fist straight at her face so fast that she did not perceive the strike until it was stopped inches from her face. The second was Keitaro's hand grabbing the man's arm with equal speed, stopping the blow before he could land it. Naru started, but had little time to process it before the next series of events began to unfold. Both stranger opened their mouths into a soft but menacing growl, revealing the same set of fangs that she had seen in Keitaro moments before. Keitaro returned the growl, and then both men lunged for Keitaro. But Keitaro kept his grip on the first man, and with incredible speed and force slammed him into the second man even before his own lighting quick move had been able to close the short distance between them. Sending the second man flying, he then yanked the first man back with such speed that it seemed to Naru that whiplash alone should have snapped his neck like a twig. But, apparently not sharing that thought, Keitaro twisted the man horizontally and delivered to him a powerful downwards punch that slammed the man into the ground as though he'd been dropped there from the top of a 100 story building.

Looking back up the second man as he came rushing back with the same lightning speed at which everything had been taking place during this encounter, Keitaro wore the most fearsome expression that Naru had ever seen on a human being. His eyes the same solid gray color that she had seem before, his face was contorted into a barely human snarl, his razor-sharp fangs clenched in an expression of primal fury. The second man took a flying leap at him, but Keitaro caught him in mid-air with seemingly contemptuous ease and used the man's own inertia to pound him headfirst into the ground, the sound of bones shattering making Naru cringe even with her already weakened sense of reality. Both of the strangers lay still. From the moment the first man had thrown the first punch at Naru, not 10 seconds had passed.

* * *

Naru stared at her lover and the two men he'd just killed as though expecting to wake up from this bad dream at any moment. However, this time she was not paralyzed by her fear and shock, and when Keitaro dropped onto his hands and knees she instantly sprung forward to his aid.

"Keitaro! Keitaro ... are you OK? Are you hurt?" She rattled off, recovering quickly this time from the shock of what she had just seen.

Keitaro looked up at her. His eyes, his teeth, were all back to normal as he met her gaze with an dazed expression likenable to someone who had just been hit hard on the head and was trying to regain his senses. Mustering her will and her strength, Naru lifted Keitaro to his feet. For the first time in a month, he wobbled a bit and looked unsteady for a moment, but then, almost as quickly as he'd lost it, he seemed to regain the sturdiness that the "new and improved" Keitaro had become famous for. His expression had also returned to something more akin to what she had seen before, albeit with a note of seriousness appropriate to the circumstances, and the two of them ran the rest of the way back to the apartments without once slowing down, the pair not seeing the two sprawled bodies they left behind began to slowly stir back into motion.


	10. The Calm Before the Storm

Keitaro and Naru made it back to the Hinata Apartments in a short order. Neither of them said a word as they ran, and as they neared the front door Naru saw the figure of Motoko standing just outside it as if waiting for them.

"What's going on?" Asked Motoko in a concerned but firm voice.

"Motoko! ... Umm ... Keitaro and I ... just went for a little jog ..." said Naru, with the uncertainty in her voice such that it didn't take someone with Motoko's keen senses to know that it was a lie.

"Naru-sempai, please do not lie to me. I know something bad has happened. I only want to help you both."

Keitaro averted his eyes from the swordmaster's gaze at those words. Motoko noticed this and turned her attention to Keitaro. "Urashima ..." she began, but as her full attention shifted to him she became aware of the fact that his Ki was a swirling, unhinged chaos of energy, and she quickly made the connection between this surge of Ki coming off of Keitaro and the bizarre, inexplicable sensations of fear and anger that had interrupted her rest only about 15 minutes ago; she sensed the very same energies spinning around in the hurricane of Keitaro's Ki. Motoko centered her own energies on Keitaro, stared him directly in the face, and said as politely as she could while conveying her message of absolute seriousness, "Keitaro, look at me. What has happened to you? Why are you ..."

Keitaro felt Motoko's steely gaze piercing into him, and now secure in the knowledge that all of those bizarre, chaotic and frightening dreams and images that had plagued him since the moment he first woke up in the hospital a month ago were not merely dreams and images, he was afraid. He did not know how he was going to handle this, and he was certain that he did not want anyone else to know anything more until he could figure that out. He was well aware of Motoko's senses and that she was quite capable of seeing past deception when she applied herself to do so, and as her eyes bored into him in search of the truth, he panicked - with the blurring speed that Naru was now becoming strangely used to seeing, Keitaro bolted past Motoko, through the door, and up the stairs.

* * *

Motoko's eyes did not follow him. Instead, they calmly shifted back over to Naru. Motoko's eyebrows lifted as she awaited explanation from Keitaro's fearfully smiling partner.

"Uh ...umm ... uh," Naru stammered hesitantly, "excuse us!" She said with a poorly faked smile, and then made her own run for it past Motoko and rushed up the stairs. Motoko watched Naru run, and took a deep breath. She turned her head towards the direction from which she had first seen the pair approaching. Focusing her senses in the direction of her gaze to the very greatest of her ability, she thought she could just make out one or more other anomalies in the usually smooth contours of the energy that flowed through Hinata and it's people. From the moment she had first seen Keitaro at the hospital, she had sensed a change in his Ki, but she could not identify or explain it. However strange that had been, it stayed stable for the rest of the month and Motoko eventually rationalized it away as Keitaro emerging from the ashes of disaster stronger than before, as many people, including herself, often did. But now ... something was changing. Keitaro was changing. And although she could not put her finger on the nature of the change, it nevertheless struck her heart with a cold spike of fear. Taking one last look outside but neither seeing nor sensing anything specific, she quietly closed the doors behind her as she went back inside.

* * *

"Haruka? It's Motoko. May I please speak with Seta?" Came Motoko's voice over the phone.

"Yeah, sure. He's just over sitting in front of the fire, let me go get him ... is everything alright over there, Motoko?" asked Seta, picking up on the sense of urgency in Motoko's voice.

"No Haruka, everything is not OK. I don't know exactly what, but something is very wrong over here, and I think Seta might be able to help."

Haruka regarded Motoko's words silently for a moment, then went and got Seta.

"Good evening Motoko, what can I do for you?" Said Seta after a moment in his usual calm but good-mannered voice.

"I must see you at once, Seta-san. It is most urgent."

"What's the problem?"

"It's simpler for you to come see it for yourself."

Seta looked up at Haruka for a moment, then said, "Alright, I'll be right over."

* * *

Naru swung open Keitaro's door to see him curled up in the corner, his head between his knees, his hands clenched in fists as they squeezed his legs against his head. Slowly, unsure of what she was supposed to do, she walked over to him.

"Keitaro?" she said softly.

His head shot out from between his knees, his eyes almost solid red as tears rolled down his face, his teeth clenched tightly in an expression of helpless fury.

"NO! It CAN'T be ... it's just not possible!" He said with a trembling voice.

"What's not possible? Keitaro, what on earth is happening to you?" Said Naru, her own voice trembling with a combination of fear and helplessness.

Keitaro unclenched his teeth as he leaned back against the wall. With a few deep breaths, he did his best to collect himself as he began to explain.

"How much do you remember about the night that you, me and Kitsune were attacked?" He said.

Naru looked away uncomfortably, not really surprised that the subject came up but nevertheless not thrilled about revisiting it.

"I remember the man with the gun ... I remember seeing Kitsune go down, her blood splashing across my face. I remember the monster .. and ... and you ..." she trailed off.

This drew an eerie chuckle out of Keitaro. "Yes, the monster. The monster ..." he began, "right before I woke up in the hospital, I had this ... dream. Or rather I thought it was a dream. I wanted to think that it was a dream. But even then, some part of me knew otherwise. I saw the events of that night all over again ... but not from my point of view. From it's. The monster's. I saw everything through it's eyes as though they were my own."

Naru sat down beside him as she listened.

"Ever since that night, I'm sure you noticed that I was growing stronger, that I was less clumsy than before and that I could focus myself better than before."

"Yes, I think everyone noticed that," said Naru.

"Well, that was all fine and dandy, but all the while, I would occasionally have another dream. Or like an image flash even when I was wide awake. But these things, they weren't like watching something on TV. They were more like ... memories ... except for their content, no different than any other memories in my head. These .. memories .. began to piece together exactly what happened to us that night, and .. what happened to me. But I disregarded the things that these memories told me because I didn't think it was possible. I disregarded them as bizarre daydreams and nightmares that were just some sort of leftover trauma from my attack. But now ..." he stopped, a fresh volley of tears bubbling out of his eyes, "now I think they were more than just dreams and nightmares. Before tonight I could rationalize away everything that had happened well enough. But I cannot rationalize anything now. All of it, the dreams, the images ... it's impossible I know, but how can you deny that which you have seen and touched with your own eyes and hands? It's ... it's for real," he finished, looking away again.

"What's real, Keitaro?" Asked Naru intently as she gently put her hand on his shoulder in support.

Keitaro was about to answer the question, but then thought better of it. He looked away and closed his eyes.

"Keitaro, please talk to me. What is real?" Naru's plea met only with more silence and more tears from Keitaro, whose expression was forming into one of unpleasant resolve. Instead of answering, he rapidly stood up and did his best to look resolute.

"I have to leave," he said, "I cannot stay here. It's too dangerous ... for everybody."

Naru started at his words. "What? Leave? Why?"

"Even with everything that you've seen, I'm not sure if you'd believe me even if I told you."

"I will believe whatever you tell me is true, Keitaro. I love you and I trust you. Surely you do not doubt that?"

"No ... I don't. It's just that ..."

"Please Keitaro. Talk to me."

Keitaro sat there in silence for a moment, not meeting Naru's eyes as his expression remained one of pained indecision. Naru decided not to stress Keitaro any further than he obviously already was.

"Well, I understand. You will tell me when you are ready to. But will you at least do one thing for me?"

Keitaro turned to look at her.

"If you are going to leave, please at least stay here for tonight. I'm sure some sleep will help you sort things out tomorrow. And maybe then we can talk about it. Will you stay here tonight, for me?"

Keitaro's emotional hurricane seemed somewhat calmed by Naru's gentle appeal. He visibly relaxed a little and simply nodded lightly in acceptance of her request. Naru then embraced Keitaro in a light hug, which Keitaro returned.

* * *

Motoko was waiting outside again as Seta's van pulled up. Seta and Haruka both exited the vehicle as it came to a stop and Motoko walked up to meet them.

"What seems to be the problem, Motoko?" Asked Seta.

"Seta-san ... I wasn't expecting ..." Motoko began, but Haruka cut her off.

"Since when am I out of the loop when it comes to my nephew?" Haruka asked, rather shortly.

Motoko bowed to her. "I'm sorry, Haruka-san. I ..."

Haruka, her demeanor lightening, once again stopped Motoko in mid-sentence. "Don't be sorry, Motoko. I know that you mean well. Forgive me if I sounded angry. Anyway, what's going on?"

* * *

Motoko explained what had taken place that night, or at least what relatively little of it she could figure, as the three went inside and sat down in the lounge. She added that the energy that had suddenly swept over her right before Keitaro and Naru had returned was disturbingly similar to that which she had felt the night they had been attacked the previous month. Upon conclusion of her story, Haruka nodded.

"Hinata is a place of rather ... unique ... energies. These apartments in particular seem to ... for lack of a better word, 'bond' to anyone who spends much time here. Anyone who stays here for very long leaves their own 'shadow' in the Hinata Apartments' energy field. With you in particular Motoko, it makes sense that you would be able to sense things through those energies. When Keitaro, Naru and Kitsune were attacked last month, that's why you sensed it. Residents were in trouble, and their own distressed energies were reflected by their shadows that remain here. Someone such as yourself who both lives here and is tuned in to that sort of thing will be able to feel those echoes if they make themselves receptive to it. I'm grateful that you have, Motoko. Regretfully, it's been so long since I've lived here that I seem to have lost my sensitivity to that particular circuit."

Motoko's eyebrows raised as Haruka spoke. She had not known that the veteran Hinata woman could was sensitive to auras and energies like that at all. Haruka smiled in her characteristically reserved way as she saw that look on Motoko's face.

"Yes, we Urashimas are just full of surprises, aren't we? You should meet his younger sister sometime ..."

Motoko smiled at Haruka's words. She had always held tremendous respect for the former Hinata Inn landlord and had of course been able to sense that Haruka possessed very strong Ki of her own, but she now felt almost foolish for never it never having occurred to her that Haruka might be 'tuned in' herself.

Seta broke the brief silence as he spoke for the first time since coming inside. "So Keitaro's Ki is awash somehow? Where is he now?"

"Probably in his or in Naru's room. Naru is probably with him."

"Do you think we should go talk to him?" Asked Haruka.

"No, please don't, not right now," came a voice from the stairway. The trio turned to see Naru standing near the bottom of the stairs, looking tired and emotionally spent but nevertheless somehow relieved and peaceful. "He's had a rough night and he's asleep now."

The three seated friends stood up as Naru walked over to them. She took a seat herself, and everyone else sat back down.

"How are you doing, Naru?" Asked Haruka.

Naru chuckled lightheartedly and gave a weak smile to match it. "I'm alright. Just tired. It's been a rather taxing evening. We'll be fine though. It's nothing we can't handle. Oh, and sorry about earlier tonight, Motoko. Call it a moment of spotlight phobia."

"Are you ready to tell me what happened?"

"I'm not entirely sure myself, actually. Keitaro is the one who might be better able to answer that. I know he knows what's happening to him, but he's not ready to talk about it. Please leave him be for tonight."

Everyone looked at each other and nodded in agreement. "Thank you," said Naru, "and now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to head back to bed myself. I'll keep an eye on Keitaro for tonight. OK?" She said with a half-laugh and smile. With that, Naru politely exited the room, and Seta, Haruka, and Motoko bid one another good night, although Motoko quietly convinced them to stay for the night.

* * *

Seta stayed behind for a moment as Haruka went upstairs. "Why did you specifically request me, Motoko?" he asked.

Motoko put on her best no-nonsense face. "Well, I guess I'm not totally sure. I know that there is something big going on here, but I do not know what it is or the nature of it. But whatever it is, I've never felt energies like what I've felt from Keitaro in the past month, and I've never felt energies as strong as I felt from him tonight from anyone .. the greatest masters I've ever met don't hold a candle to it ... I just have this feeling that I'm in a little over my head here. I just thought that you ..."

"That I could handle it if you couldn't?" Seta interjected with a smile.

Motoko blushed slightly but maintained her composure. "One lesson that I've only recently learned is that it is not weakness to ask for help."

Seta kept his smile as he walked over and faced squarely off with Motoko. "Let me tell you something, Motoko. You wanna know what the biggest difference between you and me is?" She looked up at him as he continued. "Experience. That's it. Experience. I think perhaps you've taken the fact that I defeated you in our little beachside play combat to mean that your skills are inferior to mine. But I assure you, your abilities are much closer to my own than you give yourself credit for. It is more the fact that I am older and have had more time to build up experience than anything else that enabled me to beat you that night. But even so, you gave me the best run for my money that I've had in a long time," he said with a friendly wink.

Motoko could not help but visibly increase her blush as well as fail to completely contain the honor she felt at having received such praise from one of the very few people whom she considered to be her martial superior. "Thank you for your kind words, Seta-sempai."

Seta was not one for drawing pleasure by keeping people in a moment of awkward silence. "Don't mention it. The truth requires no thank-you."

* * *

Naru slowly crawled under the covers, taking great care not to disturb the sleeping Keitaro. She took a long, hard look at his face, looking for anything that might indicate how he was feeling, but his expression was blank, like a person sleeping in dreamless slumber. His breathing was slow and steady. And as she lay there beside him, feeling relatively relaxed and calm but nevertheless unable to sleep, about the only thing unusual thing that she could not help but notice was his stillness. Normally Keitaro tended to flop around in his sleep like a fish out of water, the last noteworthy remnant of his former clumsiness and lack of grace. But tonight he slept about as peacefully as she had ever seen him. _"Good,"_ thought Naru, _"rest well Keitaro. You need it. Now if only I could follow _your_ example for a change ..."_ She closed her eyes and tried to get some sleep. 


	11. What Do I Do, Where Do I Go?

**Author's note:**

**To any White Wolf gamers out there: I am a former Werewolf: the Apocalypse gamer myself. I am well aware of the fact that some of the things that will happen from here on out will contradict werewolf _(and probably vampire, for that matter)_ lore as set down by WW. But since this story has absolutely nothing to do with WW, that fact is completely irrelevant, yes? ;)  
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* * *

**

Naru had managed to get a decent night's sleep. She had not set her alarm the previous night, so by the time she woke up, it was about 10:30. She slowly got up and walked over to the door, sticking her head out of the room to get her bearings. In doing so, she noticed a note stuck to the outside of the door. It read, _"Please do not wake these two up. They could use a little extra sleep. Signed, Haruka." _Once again, Naru felt gratitude to Haruka for her consideration. Smiling and turning to look at the still-sleeping Keitaro, she softly closed the door again as she went back into his room.

* * *

About 45 minutes later the pair emerged together, both looking refreshed. As it turned out, Kitsune had come home just before Naru had stuck her head out the door, about the same time Seta took a quick leave to go retrieve Sara from Haruka's place, and Shinobu and Suu were collected as they walked along the side of the road by Seta on his return trip, and all of them arrived back at the apartments shortly after Keitaro and Naru had meandered downstairs and joined Haruka in making breakfast. Keitaro and Naru felt slightly embarrassed that they had not noticed the absence of the younger residents, but decided that it could probably be excused of them this time given the previous day's events. In any case, as they listened to Shinobu and Suu speak happily about their first slumber party at a friend's house, they could only take pleasure in the fact that Shinobu was continuing to branch out. Kitsune returned home right as they were all sitting down to breakfast and everyone enjoyed a cheerful breakfast together.

* * *

After breakfast, everyone went their own way, Keitaro and Naru customarily heading up to her room for another study session. Keitaro seemed strangely cheerful considering what had only happened the night before, but Naru remembered that he was similarly cheerful when she had first seen him in the hospital, and that time he had received the damage rather than having inflicted it. Thus, while she did not think a whole lot of his almost overbearing cheer, this particular study session was like a view into the earliest days of their attempts to study together - Keitaro could not sit still. He could not focus at all, and quite frequently began talking to Naru about nothing in particular. Different from the past was the kind, if not somewhat reserved, reception that his ranting received, but nevertheless Naru found herself unable to concentrate on her studies in the face of such constant distraction, and she surprised even herself by lasting a couple of hours before saying anything. 

"Are you sure you're up for studying right now Keitaro?" She asked with lighthearted exasperation in response to him suddenly starting to talk about the differences between the last two movies he'd seen.

"Yeah! Sure! I'm up for just about anything right now!" He answered with a big smile.

Naru regarded him with puzzlement, as she had gotten used to his improved study skills rather quickly, and was once again somewhat at a loss for how handle a Keitaro that needed to be tied down in order to get him to sit still and focus on studying. As if suddenly becoming aware of his own boisterousness, he tried to force a look of seriousness onto his face and sat up straight. "Sorry," he said.

Naru sighed and smiled at the same time. "Don't worry about it," she replied.

The pair managed to continue studying - in some fashion or another - until near sundown, taking of course a break for lunch when the proper time rolled around. Keitaro's high energy held up right until the moment when they decided to call it a day for studying, although he did manage to stay focused at least enough so as not to drive Naru crazy.

* * *

As the sun slowly set, Keitaro and Naru emerged from her room to find that everyone was seated around the kitchen table playing a friendly game of cards. A quick glance at one another confirmed that both were thinking that a friendly game of cards sounded like a great way to unwind a bit. 

"Why hello there you two. We were beginning to wonder if you were ever coming out," said Kitsune with a wink.

Naru half-yawned and half-smiled. "Why quit while we're ahead?"

"Come play cards with us!" said Suu happily.

Naru and Keitaro looked at each other and nodded. "We'd love to," they said together, and took their seats at the table.

* * *

The table full of friends enjoyed several good games of Gin before the sun went completely down. No one particularly noticed the passing of the sun, but it was not long before someone noticed the change in Keitaro. Keitaro had taken his seat across from Seta, and as such Seta was the first to say something. 

"You alright there, Keitaro? You're looking a under the weather there all of a sudden," he said. At this everyone's attention shifted to Keitaro and his expression did indeed radiate discomfort. Keitaro shook his head the way one does when their attention has drifted away and they are suddenly snapped out of it.

"Um .. yeah ... sorry .. I'm just feeling a bit ... lightheaded ..." Keitaro said quietly.

"Wanna call it a night, Keitaro?" Asked Naru.

Keitaro visibly considered that for a moment, but in his characteristic way eventually declined. "Nah, I'm OK. Far be it for me to be the party pooper. Let's keep going!" He said, attempting a cheerful smile but what actually appeared on his face was an obvious fake.

And so the game continued for about another half an hour before Keitaro went back on his earlier decision. From the moment Seta had first spoken to him Keitaro had quickly deteriorated. He had become very jittery and his face had become flustered, and by the forth or fifth suggestion from Naru that the two call it a night Keitaro had shortly accepted. There were looks and words of concern coming at him from everyone by then, but again with uncharacteristic shortness he shrugged them off. Equally unusually, Keitaro had not waited for Naru to reach his side before scooting up the stairs, and Naru exchanged a look of uncertainty with the rest of the table, where the calm, festive mood had been somewhat dulled by Keitaro's sudden decline of demeanor. Naru then followed Keitaro up the stairs as the rest of the residents did their best to get back into their game.

* * *

Naru was only a few feet from Keitaro's door when it flew open, narrowly missing hitting her. From right behind the door burst Keitaro, his facial expression being a combination of panic and the look she had seen on his face the night before, minus the solid gray eyes and mouthful of sharp teeth. Startled, she stopped in her tracks. He did not leave her to wallow in question for long. 

"I have to get out of here," he said urgently.

"Wha ...," began Naru, but she was not allowed to finish her sentence. Something flashed before her eyes and then Keitaro was gone. Having already seen this several times before, Naru was no longer especially surprised by this sort of occurrence in of itself. The look on Keitaro's face before he vanished was the cause for her alarm - she had only seen it that one time before ... and what had happened that time was not an experience that she was hoping to repeat. Nevertheless, she had seen the fear in Keitaro's face as well, and as before, she was not prepared to see him face it alone. She bolted down the hallway after him.

* * *

The others were already standing around the front door by the time Naru got there, looks of awe and confusion ripe across their faces as they pondered aloud to one another about what they had just seen - all could have sworn that it was Keitaro who had just flashed past their eyes and out the door, but there was seemingly equal conviction being voiced that there was no way that Keitaro, or anyone for that matter, could have possibly moved that fast. Only Motoko and Kitsune did not seem especially stumped. Motoko had already witnessed Keitaro performing this feat of speed, and her expression was more one of concentration as she again strove to understand the energies she was sensing. Kitsune, on the other hand, wore an expression more akin to semi-surprised fear. She had seen more than anyone else on that unfortunate night one month ago, and in particular she had seen more than one "individual" move with the same lightning speed that she had just seen. Moreover, she was almost as certain as Motoko that that had indeed been Keitaro, and with her unrestrained imagination she had come to her own conclusions about what was going on. However, the more convinced she became that her theory might have some truth to it, the less she felt like sharing it - she was known for her voicing of outlandish theories about the bizarre happenings around the Hinata Apartments, often at rather inappropriate times. Now, when the most unexpected event rolled around where her outlandish theory was seeming more and more like the truth, she found herself in one of those exceedingly rare moods where she was not in the least bit interested in creating a stir. That, and she imagined that Naru would not take kindly to her apparently making light of the situation.

* * *

Naru decided that she did not care for the round of questioning that surely awaited her. Hardly slowing from her initial decent from the stairs, she attempted to force her way through the mass of bodies blocking the doorway. She didn't make it. A pair of firm hands caught her arm as she passed, and Naru found herself staring into the face of a very serious Motoko. 

"No more games, Naru. What is going on? What's happening to Keitaro?" Said Motoko firmly.

"Umm .. I don't know ..," Naru began, speaking with the same hesitation that she often did when confronted with things that she's rather not talk about, but this time with an aura of urgency rather than delay.

Motoko's face contorted with irritation, if not anger, as she began to reply. "Naru! I said no more games! Now please, tell us what's happening with Kei..."

Naru's face more than matched Motoko's for irritation as she cut her off. "How about we just find him now and talk about it later?" she half-yelled back at Motoko.

Motoko's own anger was somewhat disarmed by the emotion she had drawn out of her friend, but any misdirection Motoko might have felt was quickly redirected. "Forgive me. Yes, finding him should be the first priority."

* * *

Keitaro had ran without giving much thought to where he was going, and as such he did not realize that he had ended up in the very same ditch where all this had began until he had been sitting in it for several minutes. Even in his distressed state he could not help but smirk at that small irony. But he did not dwell on the thought for long. His body was alive with sensation - not exactly pain, not exactly pleasure, but very intense. He had been afraid before, when he had ran out of the apartments, but now he was feeling strangely empowered by the sensations. He sat there in the ditch soaking them up like a massage. After a very short time he was in such a state of almost drugged euphoria that the sudden burst he felt within his body drew a startled yelp out of him. He could almost hear more than feel his bones suddenly begin to grow and reshape, and as he clenched his teeth he could feel them growing longer and sharper. He lifted his head as he took in a deep breath, and in doing so, the reflection of the full moon gleamed off his eyes. 

At that very moment Keitaro felt the greatest surge of energy sweep over and through him. This produced a loud gasp from him, and as his eyes clouded over gray he surrendered himself to what was about to happen.

* * *

"Keitaro!" The sound of his name in a familiar voice once again bringing him partially back to his senses. He turned in the direction of the voice to see Naru standing in front of Haruka and Shinobu. They were still a good 50 feet away from him, and still being on his knees little more than his head showed above the top of the ditch. Thus the changing features of his face were not immediately clear to the trio, but the change in his voice was hard to miss. 

"Everyone ... please ... go home," he said, Naru recognizing the deep, primal voice from the previous night but Shinobu's distress increased visibly as she heard it and Haruka's face too bore signs of increased concern.

"Keitaro! Are you OK? Please let us help you!" cried Naru as she began to run towards him, followed quickly by Haruka and Shinobu.

"No! Please, just ... RRRRRGGG!" His words broke down into a suppressed scream and his head disappeared beneath their line of site. At seeing Naru heading towards him, he had tried to resist the change, but attempting to do so only changed the sensations he was feeling from something not too far short of pleasant into genuine pain. Knowing that his sudden drop from sight was only going to bring the others to him even faster, he tried even harder to fight against what was happening to him, but this just made it hurt even more and did nothing to slow the process down. More suppressed screams escaped his mouth as he watched claws extend from the tips of his fingers and his entire arms contorted as their muscle mass increased several times. His clothing burst around him as his whole body well past it's normal size with darker skin that was rapidly being darkened further by the sprouting of hair. His suppressed scream then turned more into a roar as his face began the final change - his snout jutted forward just as his already elongated and sharpened teeth quickly grew out into fangs, his canines not stopping until they were nearly the size of his thumbs. The final twitches and jolts of the change rippled through him for a few moments, and then it was complete.

* * *

Naru, being a few strides ahead of Haruka and Shinobu, was only a few more strides from the edge of the ditch when the creature shot back to its feet with a frightening growl. He was not facing them, but almost instantly turned to do so, and Naru had already fallen over backwards at the sight that had suddenly presented itself to her. Now sitting propped up by her arms, she stared at the thing that had been Keitaro up until a moment ago with a combination of horrified disbelief and terrible flashback. Some small tatters of his clothing still clung to him, and that was enough recognition for Shinobu. "Sempai ..." she whimpered quietly, and as the color drained from her face she collapsed at Haruka's feet, out like a light. Had Shinobu been conscious and Naru been attentive, they would have seen for the first time a look of fear on the face of the stoic Haruka. Granted, Haruka's fear was as much for the sake of her nephew as for her own safety, but that sort of difference is hard to translate into a facial expression. For the first time in quite a few years, the elder Urashima was paralyzed into inaction. However long this standoff may have seemed to those involved, the three women and the creature only stared at one another for maybe 20 seconds before it bellowed a roar at them that almost sounded vaguely of frustration and bolted down the ditch with inhuman speed. Though the distance must have been a good 20 yards, it was into the brush and out of sight in just a couple of seconds.

* * *

Keitaro's thoughts were an almost inoperable haze of chaos. He was still aware of himself and knew the new form he had taken, but those same visions that he'd been having all month, combined with a sensory overload, all but blinded him in both thought and action. He had spun towards the sound of Naru and company approaching out of instinct, but it took him a moment even to recognize those people he knew so well. He had just stared right back at them for a moment as the hurricane in his head began to wind down. As Shinobu had dropped to the ground his thoughts had collected enough for him to have an appreciation for what was happening, and through his haze he formed a thought of slight anger at his friends for not having turned around as he'd asked and for seeing him like this, and most especially for having allowed Shinobu to see it. He'd wanted to yell out his frustration at them, but as if for a moment forgetting the form he was in, all that came out was a primeval roar. As he heard himself, his subconscious made the choice between "fight or flight" for him. Though his inhibitions were somewhat relaxed and he felt his usual restraint on reacting to the first thoughts or ideas weakened, he was still far too much his old self for him to even think about hurting people he loved, but he could not stand the situation any longer. Tapping into every bit of speed that his new powers enabled him, he turned and fled down the ditch, not having the slightest idea of where he was going to go or what he was going to do, only knowing that he wanted to get away. 


	12. Did I?

A solemn and rather dejected party slowly walked up the stairs of the Hinata Apartments. Flanked by Naru, Shinobu and Haruka who all wore expressions of silent shock, and with everyone else falling into line behind them, Seta quietly opened the door. Although Motoko had sensed Keitaro's energy surge as he had begun to change, her and her search partner Kitsune had been too far away to get there before Keitaro had fled the scene, and all they found was a stunned Haruka propping up the limp form of Shinobu, whose face was white as a sheet, gently against a rock while an equally stunned Naru looked on. The new arrivals at first feared that Shinobu had been hurt, but the fear was quickly put to rest as Haruka managed to revive the young girl. Shinobu looked around groggily as though trying to confirm that this whole thing was just a bad dream, but was quickly forced to abandon the idea as she once again became aware of her surroundings. Upon this realization her eyes filled with tears and she again whimpered the word, "sempai ...," at which time Naru kneeled down and embraced her in a hug, her own eyes glistening with tears, as Haruka said simply to Motoko and Kitsune, "let's get everyone home." They had met up with Seta, Sara and Suu on the way back, Suu's enthusiastic questioning about whether or not they'd seen Keitaro fizzled out as she took in the somber and solemn looks on their faces. Seta and Haruka had looked into one another's eyes silently for a few moments, and then Seta, as if her eyes had communicated everything, simply nodded and fell into line with the rest of them as they marched quietly homeward.

* * *

Everyone sat around the kitchen table as the 3 witnesses to Keitaro's change told their stories of what they had seen. Naturally, there was some disbelief, but as the discussion went back to include the events of the event that had started it all, the attack upon Keitaro, Naru and Kitsune one month ago, and made mention of Keitaro's impossibly fast healing that up until now no one had wanted to question, and his sudden increase in strength, stamina and grace, Kitsune decided that perhaps her theory was now worthy of mention.

"You know ...," Kitsune began, to capture everyone's attention, "doesn't this whole situation bear uncanny similarity to the legend of the werewolf?" As looks ranging from the old and irritated 'what the hell are you talking about Kitsune' to a look of genuine anger from Naru appeared across the faces of the residents, she continued nervously. "Seriously! I know it sounds crazy, but think about it ... he gets bitten by a monster last full moon, he heals completely almost overnight from a wound that should have taken months to heal and should have left him with all kinds of scars, he's suddenly solid as a rock and now this? I mean ..." she trailed off, now wishing that she hadn't said anything as she wilted under the gazes of her friends. Only Motoko seemed to be giving Kitsune's words due consideration.

"Kitsune could be right ..." Motoko said quietly after a few minutes, attention shifting to her as she did so. Motoko's gaze rose to meet theirs. "I remember ... when I was learning the history of my family and our role warriors against demons and monsters, some small mention was made of 'shapeshifters' in a few of the texts regarding the types of demons in this world ..." The looks of irritation and anger that Kitsune had seen quickly evaporated as Motoko continued, "not much else was said about them and none of our training emphasized these 'shapeshifters,' but ..." she paused for a moment, "Kitsune's theory cannot be ruled out. However crazy it sounds, it does fit the facts, and that I am at a loss for any other explanation to explain the powerful energies that Keitaro has been radiating all this time."

The entire assembly sat their in awkward and uncomfortable silence for what seemed like an hour, all the residents with their own thoughts. Everyone was having a hard time with that explanation but were lacking for any other. Even the first hand witnesses, Haruka, Shinobu and Naru, despite what they had seen, found their rationality tearing at them whenever they had even the faint idea of accepting it.

* * *

Keitaro looked up from his kill at the sound of approaching footsteps. The human was a good 100 yards off, but in the otherwise dead silence that now surrounded him, even a that range the quiet sound of footsteps was as clear as music to his ears. As he had wandered the night aimlessly after fleeing his friends he had quickly been consumed by a fierce hunger the likes of which Keitaro had never known. To his own horror, as he would silently watch from cover the few humans he encountered pass him by, the thought of killing and eating them at the same time made his stomach growl in anticipation and revile in disgust. However, Keitaro retained more control over himself than he lost, and he merely hid himself from view until the humans had vanished from sight. But with every minute his hunger gnawed at him a little harder. Fortunately for him and for whatever humans might have been in the area, Keitaro shortly picked up the scent of a horse. Following his nose, he came across a small private stable in which a single horse was housed. The scent of prey then overwhelmed him, and with a snarl he had smashed down the heavy wooden door of the stable as though it were made of rotten toothpicks. His senses had immediately locked on to the startled animal, and this time it was neither dream nor memory as he tasted blood and felt bones shatter in his jaws.

* * *

Mr. Ozawa and his wife were reading quietly in their living room when they first heard the noises. A loud crash resonated from the stable, followed quickly by the sounds of a panicking horse and then something that sounded almost like a roar or a growl. But silence returned within a few seconds.

"What the hell was that?" Said Mrs. Ozawa.

Her husband went over to the window for a moment and said, "I don't know. I don't see anything."

"Well you'd better go check it out. That's your daughter's horse out there. You know how much she loves that thing."

Mr. Ozawa nodded. He put down his book, grabbed the flashlight by the door, and went outside. The door into the stable was on the side that was just out of the line of sight from the house, and as such Mr. Ozawa couldn't see it until he actually reached the stable.

* * *

Mr. Ozawa stopped in his tracks as his eyes fell upon the smashed door. "What the hell ..." he said quietly to himself as he heard the sound of movement inside, "well, at least that horse didn't get out," he said. But as he went through the door, he once again halted in mid-stride, a look of stunned horror spreading across his face. Right in front of him, or more accurately, all over the front of the stable, were scattered the barely recognizable remains of his daughter's horse. The huge animal had literally been torn to pieces.

* * *

Keitaro looked down on the man from his perch in the rafters above him. was at this point keenly aware that his control over his actions was less even than when he had fled from his friends earlier that night, and it took all of his remaining self-control not to add the man's remains to the grisly scene that he had already created. In the most simplistic sort of way, he was angered at having his meal interrupted. He had only just begun to satisfy his hunger when the sound of someone approaching had brought him back to his senses just enough to remember that he did not want to be seen like this by anyone else than who had already seen it. But as he watched the man below him, the man who'd interrupted his feeding, his primitive anger welled up. His clawed fingers unwittingly tightened their already powerful grip on the wooden beam he was perched upon, and the wood splintered beneath them. At the sound, he suddenly found himself illuminated by the man's flashlight. At that point, a combination of surprise, fear, and rage momentarily overwhelmed Keitaro's self-control, and he reacted.

* * *

Hypnotized with disgusted horror as he examined the shredded horsemeat around him, the sound of wood splintering startled Ozawa. Reflexively he moved to look at the source. What his flashlight put in the spotlight gave him his second great shock in half as many minutes. It was clearly man-like in overall shape, but the similarities ended there. Its skin was a sort of dark gray color, and thick sections of hair striped its head and back. But more disturbingly, the creature was covered with blood. The hands that gripped the now splintered wood ended in talons, and it had an elongated jaw that was filled with a fearsome set of fangs which now bared themselves at him. Before his brain could process anything else, the creature flung itself at him with terrifying speed. Only the fact that he had already been in the process of stumbling backwards allowed him to avoid the worst of the attack. The jaws missed him, but the creature, seeing that it was going to miss its target, lashed out with its clawed hand instead. A fleeting swipe though it may have been , the creature's strength was such that even that glancing blow broke the ribs that it connected with, and the claws left four deep lacerations across Ozawa's chest. Hitting the ground as the creature landed just outside the doorway, he tiled his head back, expecting to see the creature turning around to finish him off. The creature did indeed regard him as though to do so for a moment, but then seemingly thought better of it, and as he faded into unconsciousness, he remembered seeing the creature vanish from his sight as though disappearing into thin air.

* * *

Keitaro spent the next couple hours fighting to stay in control. The excitement of the kill, or feeding, and of fighting had brought his blood to a boil. The few mouthfuls of the horse that he'd managed to consume before the man had showed up had only taken the edge off his hunger. Ravenously, he had hunted down and devoured every living thing he could find other than humans. Squirrels, birds, rats ... over the course of those few frantic hours he must have eaten a score of them before his hunger died down and he once again was more or less in control of himself. His driving hunger satisfied at last, he found it relatively easy to hide himself away for the remainder of the night.

* * *

Breakfast passed without the customary cheer that was the normal but also without the stunned silence that had dominated the scene after the past few late-night scares. The potential implications of last night aside, everyone was becoming strangely, or perhaps sadly, used to this sort of thing, and it no longer left them totally at a loss as it once did. They even managed light conversation. Afterwards, everyone had gone about their daily business with as much energy as they could manage. Although little else had been said about the matter after Kitsune had made her contribution, Haruka had indirectly admitted that, whatever the truth might be, there was little chance of finding him if he really did not want to be found. That idea was not well liked either, for Keitaro had fled from them more than once in the past and he had never proven too terribly difficult to track down. But Haruka's powers of persuasion, even when unintended or unemphasized, were quite extraordinary, and the icy tone of her soft voice sucked the energy, such as it was, right out of the suggestion that they should resume their search. But everyone, Naru and Shinobu in particular, knew that she was right.

* * *

Shinobu and Kitsune were the only residents left downstairs by that afternoon. Seta and Haruka had had to head over to the tea shop for a few hours to take care of a few business issues there. Suu and Sarah had disappeared on their own as they often did though the usual sounds of their mischief-making were distinctly absent, Motoko was training on the roof, and Naru had quietly gone into her room and nothing more had been heard from her. Kitsune, whom at the request of her interest Dr. Hasagawa had cut down her drinking considerably in the past month, was quietly reading on a couch in the lounge instead of engaging in her formerly routine morning alcohol binge. Shinobu was absent-mindedly channel surfing after she had cleaned up from breakfast.

* * *

Keitaro forcibly made his way through the relatively thin but slow moving crowds that were now filling the sidewalks. He had not, as he had seen in werewolf movies before, simply woken up naked somewhere with no memory of what he had been doing the night before. Rather, as daybreak had approached, the feral instincts and his sense of only being half-there had waned quickly, and he had been quite aware of himself morphing back into his human form. He was in fact naked though, as none of his clothes had survived his rapid growth spurt from the night before, and after doing his best to rid himself of the bloodstains that covered much of his body he had been fast about snatching the first unflattering set of clothing that he had been able to find. Not many people left their laundry out to dry at that dreadful hour of the morning, but he had been fortunate enough to find a minimum of garments before being seen by any of the early morning joggers and dog-walkers that always led the day. Very quickly after resuming his previous figure, the haziness of the night before began to straighten itself out in his head, and his desire to get home overrode his utter exhaustion and he made a good pace in that direction. Throughout the night, if not more by instinct than by cognitive thought, he had never wandered too far outside the areas he knew well, so he knew right where he was going and how to get there, and was in no mood to mingle. Irritably, almost angrily, he elbowed people out of his way as he nearly ran towards the Hinata Apartments, and his aura was such that no one raised much of a protest. His previous night's hunting had taken him quite a walk away, so even at his pace it was well into the late morning before he made it home.

As he was about to begin walking up the front steps of the Hinata Apartments, it suddenly dawned on him that he was not sure how he should approach his residents after what had happened the night before. The steely resolve that had driven him here despite his spent state quickly gave way to fear and hesitation, and suddenly he dreaded the thought of being seen by any of them before he could figure that out. Taking a quick look around and being satisfied that no one who knew him had seen him, he tucked himself away around the back and snuck in through an open window.

* * *

Motoko slowly and deliberately sheathed her sword and stood still. As she had brought her senses up to full bore during her morning exercise, she had just managed to get enough of an impression of Keitaro's energy to be pretty confident that he had returned. But his energy was weak now, weaker than it had ever been since he had come back from the hospital. Indeed, had she not been training at the time and thus focused, she would probably have missed it. Motoko stood still for a moment, collecting her own thoughts, and went back inside, quietly making her way to Keitaro's room.

* * *

By now Keitaro's energy was virtually gone. He was in the arduous process of removing his borrowed clothes when to his horror his door quietly opened. His thoughts momentarily froze as he found himself locking eyes with Motoko. He had not yet prepared himself to face his friends, and as such he was frozen silent. Motoko did not leave him to suffer the awkwardness for long.

"Are you hurt, Urashima?" She asked in a quiet, almost whispering voice. Taken slightly off guard by the question, he made no immediate reply other than to flash this fact across his face. Seeing this, Motoko motioned to the crumpled shirt that lay at Keitaro's feet. It lay inside out, and the inside was spotted with light but unmistakable bloodstains. Following her gaze, he quickly looked back up at her. "No," he answered back. Catching the 'are you sure' look that Motoko returned, he closed his eyes and shook his head sadly. "It's not mine," he said in a choked up voice, motioning back at the bloody shirt.

Motoko immediately understood his words. For a few long minutes, the two stood their in motionless silence, Keitaro's emotions seeping to the surface and Motoko unsure of what she should do or say. Then Keitaro suddenly dropped onto his knees and looked back up at Motoko, his eyes now filled with tears. "What's happening to me Motoko?" he said with his voice radiating the sort of hollow anger that happens when one lacks the energy to back their emotions. "I don't want this, I didn't ask for this, I can't ... I can't ..." he broke off into a quiet sob as he clenched his jaw against his feeling. Motoko first was overcome with the desire to comfort him, and then almost immediately became aware of the deeper feeling she now felt. It was true that since the Tsuruko ordeal had come to its satisfactory end that she had ceased to regard Keitaro in the negative ways that she previously had, and it was also true that she had come to respect and care for him on a more personal level in the weeks that followed his attack. But now ... at that moment ... she wasn't sure exactly what it was that she felt within her own heart. This raised a hundred questions within her own mind, but she quickly decided that the answers could wait. Softly she crossed the gap between them and kneeled down in front of Keitaro. He did not raise his head to meet her gaze, he simply lowered his forehead to her shoulder and let his tears flow silently. Motoko gently put her arm around him and allowed a few tears to well up in the back of her own eyes.

Motoko was not aware of how long they sat there like that, but eventually she became aware of the fact that Keitaro was now silent and that his leaning against her seemed more like dead weight. Slowly pushing herself backwards, she looked at his face, and against the red puffiness from his crying she could see that he was sound sleep. His exhaustion had caught up with him at last. Carefully she laid him down where he sat, then went and grabbed his blanket and lightly covered him with it. Slowly standing up and once again collecting her own thoughts, she silently exited his room, closing the door behind her.

* * *

As it turned out, it was now nearly lunchtime, and a distinctly apathetic group had assembled in the kitchen. Haruka and Seta had also returned in the meantime and were helping Shinobu make the meal while Kitsune, Naru, and even Suu and Sara sat quietly around the table, frequently making eye contact with one another but not saying a word. They all acknowledged Motoko with the same silence as she joined them in the kitchen. Looking around and seeing the solemn faces, Motoko took a deep breath and spoke.

"Keitaro has come back," she said, as a matter of factly as she could manage.

Her words resulted in the immediate cessation of what little noise was being generated in the room. Before anyone could give much reaction, Motoko spoke again. "He's sleeping in his room. He's not hurt. But he's exhausted, he's confused, and he's frightened. Let him sleep in peace for now and come to us when he's ready."

Everyone but Naru exchanged looks with one another, and seemingly reluctantly agreed with Motoko's words. Naru though closed her eyes for a moment, then quietly got up.

"Naru ..." came Haruka's soft but firm voice.

"I just want to see him. I won't wake him," replied Naru in a half-choked voice. Motoko and Haruka exchanged a look with one another, after which Haruka simply said, "alright."

* * *

Very quickly a small puddle of tears formed at Naru's feet as she stood in the doorway of Keitaro's room. He was sleeping soundly, quietly and without movement, but his face bore the unmistakable signs of his pain. He had clearly been weeping heavily quite recently, for his whole face was still red and puffy, and crust was beginning to form around his swollen eyes. The silent look of pain on his face tore at Naru's heart. She wanted so desperately to embrace him, to share his pain and ease his burden, but she knew that to wake him from his rest now would only worsen things for him. So she just stood there for a while, taking in the fact that she could see him and see that he was at least physically OK, and wanting all of this to just go away. After a time, she wiped her own eyes dry, quietly closed his door, and went back downstairs.

* * *

The rest of the afternoon passed with a sense of apprehensive concern, but the fact that Keitaro was confirmed to be home and safe did at least allow the residents enough energy to go about their daily routines.

* * *

Later that evening, just after sundown, the doorbell rang. Naru, on her way back to her room after getting a drink from the kitchen, just happened to be nearest to the front door and answered it. As she met the eyes of the 'guests,' the color drained from her already wearisome face and the glass tumbled from her hand, shattering as it hit the floor.

The sound of commotion coming from the entryway was enough to grab Haruka and Seta's attention away from their respective books, and the sound of a muffled scream caused them to shoot to their feet and rush towards the entryway. But before they even got there, they nearly ran into the cause of the commotion. Three men came around the corner. They were all dressed in dark clothing and gray trench coats, and one of them had a firm grip on Naru, one arm holding hers behind her back and the other covering her mouth. They were making as thought to head up the stairs when confronted by Seta and Haruka, and they stopped.

"Who the hell are you and what the hell do you think you're doing?" hissed Haruka.

"Our business is not with you, any of you, or her," the lead man of the three said in calm but somewhat irate voice, nodding to Naru as he said the last part, "stay out of our way and this will end nicely for everyone."

"Interfere my ass. Indeed and truly, you've picked a bad place to play games," said Haruka, fixing her eyes on the speaker as she drew the small dagger that she always carried from within her sleeve.

Seta followed suit, slowly producing a small dagger that matched Haruka's from within his own sleeve, and said, "Let her go, and we'll talk."

The speaker of the intruders snorted angrily. "We don't have time for this crap," he said. Motioning to the man holding Naru, the man violently pushed Naru at Haruka, sending the younger woman hard against the ground as she failed to keep her balance. Turning to look back at her assailants, Naru spoke.

"You sons of bi ..." she began furiously, then broke off as saw what was happening. The three men had tossed off their trench coats and torn off their shirts. Facing the residents in a very threatening manner, they began to change. Naru and Haruka had seen this before. Much quicker than they had seen Keitaro do the night before, they finished their transformations and three fearsome monsters now bore down on the Hinata residents.

"Holy shit ..." Seta said under his breath, as he and Haruka held up their daggers in defiance.

"STOP!" Came a deep and serious voice from behind them. The creatures stopped in their tracks, and the others turned to see Keitaro standing there, his own eyes now flat gray as he gave the creatures a steely glare. The creatures regarded him for a moment as if pondering their next move, and then the lead creature made a small gesture with it's hand. They then morphed back into their human forms.

"I will go with you," said Keitaro, his voice maintaining his ironclad resolution.

The speaker for the intruders eyed Keitaro right back with a similar icy stare. "Much could have been avoided had you come with us the first time," he said.

"The first time?" Said Haruka to Keitaro. "Keitaro, do you know these men?"

"Yes I do."

"Who ..."

"Don't worry about that right now. I'll explain the whole thing some other time. For now, I must go with them."

"Keitaro! You don't have to go with them! Why don't you just smash the shit out of them like you did last time!" Said Naru angrily. Seta and Haruka looked at each other.

"I was wrong. Please just trust me. Everything will be OK. But now I have to go."

"Goddammit Keitaro, don't ..." began Naru, but she stopped when Keitaro's gaze flashed over to her. He stared at her for a moment with his gray eyes, then his eyes shifted back to their old brown.

"I'm sorry," he said in a surpassingly calm manner, "you'll hear from me soon."

With that, Keitaro walked forward, joining ranks with the three intruders as they put their trench coats back on. Naru, Haruka and Seta watched in silent confusion as Keitaro lead the three men out the door.


	13. The Waiting Game

The Hinata Apartments always were different without Keitaro around. His absence was enough of a drain on everyone's spirit under the best of possible circumstances, and the fact that his most recent departure was under what was much closer to the worst of possible circumstances did not help. The experiences that everyone had shared in the month preceding his psuedo-abduction at the hands of the three - men? Creatures? Monsters? _Werewolves? _- had by then given them more resistance to shock with this sort of thing than most people would even develop, and so the time of stunned silence and inaction lasted only for a few seconds after the last of the three intruders had closed the door behind him. Naru, in particular, gave an all-new reaction.

Far from breaking down into downtrodden depression as she had done in the past, scarcely had the sounds of departing footsteps faded away from outside than Naru's face had contorted with fury and she had made a bolt for the front door as though to pursue them. It had taken the very best efforts of Seta and Haruka together to restrain her without injuring her in the process. By then the commotion had drawn the remaining residents downstairs, and a quick survey of the faces present was all that was needed for the others to have a pretty good idea what the problem was - Keitaro was gone again. Already somewhat at a loss and finding their hands full with holding Naru to the ground, neither Seta nor Haruka were able to provide the answers that questioning - or more so, demanding in Motoko's case - sought. Naru was screaming obscenities both at the "Motherfucking wolfman assholes who were not going to take Keitaro away from her again" and the two adults who stopping her from bringing him back. Seeing the situation was getting out of hand, Haruka, with practiced precision, delivered a short, sharp and direct strike to the back of Naru's head, immediately silencing her frenzied shouts. That alone cut more than half the decibels from the room's total, and those that remained quickly fizzled out as Haruka had rounded upon the others with her fiercest glare of icy steel. Even Motoko, never one to back down from anything lightly, quickly toned down both her demands and her voice as Haruka had first locked eyes with her. After a short but tense moment of the two standing silently face-to-face, Motoko had lowered her eyes. Speaking quietly but with her voice carrying the kind of incredible strength possessed by none other than Haruka, she did her best to explain the situation. The usual traces of gentleness that she tried to use around the younger residents were absent from this effort, with the expected effect on Shinobu and even seeing Suu's spirit dampen like only the negative events associated with this whole situation ever had done. Ordering everyone back to their rooms, Haruka had brought the current situation to a close. Seta had carried the unconscious Naru up to her room, and Haruka had stayed where she was, staring at the front door.

* * *

The next couple weeks had passed with a great deal of tension. Naru, hardly moping about a state of depression, flung herself about her daily affairs with an aggressive smartness and anger that was anything but subtle. The air was especially thick during the relatively infrequent occasions whenever Naru and Haruka crossed paths. Haruka had, visibly at least, more or less returned to her old self and would regard Naru with her characteristic manner of emotional neutrality and minimalistic politeness, to which Naru would reply with an icy glare that was starting to curiously resemble those that Haruka herself could use to silence an entire room when she really wanted to. At some point or another it had occurred at least once to everyone that it was a good thing that Haruka seemed understanding and never tried to pick a fight with Naru. Seta didn't know if Naru was mad at him too for his role in restraining her the night that Keitaro had left, and not wanting to further raise the stress tables around Hinata any higher than they already were, so he had made it a point to avoid the apartments whenever tactfully possible, or at least to avoid Naru. As it was, the two never did meet before the next event took place that was to have a profound effect on everyone.

* * *

About 3 weeks had passed with no word from or about Keitaro at all. It was Shinobu who collected the mail the day that Keitaro's letter arrived. She had almost dropped everything she else she had been carrying when she noticed it amongst the stack of mail. Hastily cramming everything but Keitaro's letter into her bookbag, she had speedily zipped up the stairs, powered by a sense of cautious optimism. Hastily gathering everyone who was home at the time, which amounted to Kitsune, Motoko and Suu (Sarah had been spending much of this time with Seta), the four of them had read Keitaro's letter together.

'_Hello everybody -_

_I'm sorry that I was unable to contact you sooner. It's a long, complicated and extremely bizarre story. _

_I just wanted to let you all know that I am alive and well. Given your first impressions, and mine, for that matter, I don't expect that you'll believe me when I say that the people I am with aren't really bad people at all. Well, not really, it's just ... well, like I said, it's a long, complicated and extremely bizarre story. Anyway, they've kept me pretty busy and this is the first opportunity that I've had to write to you all. I don't know when I'll be coming home, as I've still got a lot of work to do, but I'll make it a point to keep in better touch from now on. Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to disclose my location, nor can I give you any way to contact me, so I'm afraid this will be a one-way conversation for a while. I hope you are all doing well. I miss you all dearly and I hope to see you soon. I promise I will explain everything when I come home._

_Keitaro'_

Everyone except Naru had passed those 3 weeks in an obvious state of lowered spirits, but having gone through this same routine more than once since this whole fiasco had started, they had managed to carry on their daily affairs without too much difficulty. Naru had taken it harder than anyone else, and had reacted differently. She had been as curt, irritable and short-tempered with everyone as she had been with Keitaro himself when he had first arrived at the Hinata Apartments. Indeed, it was as much Naru's behavior as Keitaro's absence that had maintained the tension during that time. After reading the letter, the next day she had had Kitsune get in touch with Seta and make sure that he along with everyone else was present that evening at dinner, where she had made a tearful apology to everyone for her behavior of late, and made a special apology to Haruka and Seta as well as thanking them for controlling her on that unfortunate night. "... had you let me go after him, myself and possibly some of you would probably be dead right now ..." she had said. Hugs had been exchanged all around, and harmony had been restored among the residents.

* * *

For the next 7-odd months, they received a letter from Keitaro at least every other week. They could not help but notice that although he always commented that he was staying very busy, he never really said much about exactly what it was that he was doing, and he certainly never gave a hint as to where he was. But he always said that he was doing well, and indeed, his rising enthusiasm for whatever it was that he was doing gradually became more evident in his writing. He would also say that he believe that the time when he would be able to see them again was drawing nearer, and that had so much to tell them. This regular contact had a very uplifting effect on everyone at the Hinata Apartments, and after a few months, business flowed there much as it did before, as it had begun to seem as though Keitaro were just away on vacation or something. It was frustrating for them not to be able to say anything back to him, but just hearing from him regularly and knowing that he was doing well was enough to allow them to go about their lives normally. Also about 3 months into Keitaro's absence, Mutsumi had made another of her unannounced arrivals. After some brief hesitation, it was decided to tell Mutsumi everything that had happened since she had last been there. Thus a very long dinnertime was spent catching her up, and Mutsumi's reactions to the stories, ranging from a concerned-sounding "ara ara" when the less pleasant parts were told to simply a smile during the happier moments made it difficult for anyone to tell if she even believed them. Whatever the truth of the matter may have been, she was definitely interested in reading Keitaro's letters and inquiring if anyone knew when he would be coming back. She ended up staying.

* * *

Naru slowly pulled herself out of bed. She had told Shinobu that she would make breakfast today because the younger girl had been up much later than usual last night helping Kitsune and Dr. Hasagawa make a variety of things for a hospital potluck lunch that the Doctor was hosting today. Feeling a bit more energized than she usually did on those occasions when she woke up a bit earlier than usual, she finished getting dressed, went downstairs and set about the business of cooking.

Naru had not gotten very far when she thought she heard a faint noise from the entryway. Figuring that perhaps it was Shinobu, getting up early after all to make breakfast out of habit and her extraordinary sense of duty, Naru just smiled and waited for her.

"Psst, Shinobu! Is that you?" Suddenly came a familiar male voice quietly from just outside the kitchen. Naru immediately recognized the voice. It was a voice she had been longing to hear again for 8 months. Longing to hear, but not expecting to at any particular time. Momentarily thrown aback, her spatula hand lowered as she looked up, accidentally coming into contact with the hot edge of the pan. She yelped. In a flash Keitaro was at her side. "Oh man, if I'd have known it was going to be you making breakfast today, I'd have shown up a little earlier and waited for you outside your door," he said with a smile. "Are you alright?"

Naru just looked up at him for a moment, made speechless by this unexpected surprise. He looked a little different than he had when he left - he looked a more muscular, he had grown in thick facial hair that was trimmed short, and his eyes, though the same color as before, now radiated a sort of vivid energy that surrounded his whole being and almost seemed to make him glow in her eyes. He was wearing light tan pants and a black short sleeve shirt, over which a graceful black trenchcoat was fitted. All things considered, he looked larger than life. Naru only stood staring at him. She could feel no tears welling up in her eyes. No, the sudden surge of emotion that had happened before during one of their dramatic reunions following a bad departure from one another's company was absent. Rather, this time, she felt a wave of peace and serenity sweep over her. At about that moment Keitaro became aware of the prevailing silence and smiled meekly. "I'm sorry, I thought it might be fun to surprise you by showing up unannounced. I guess maybe I should have called."

Naru just smiled at him. Moving the pan off of the burner, she walked over to him and wrapped herself around Keitaro in a gentle but firm hug. Keitaro smiled back and returned the gesture. Together they stood in silence for what was only a few minutes, but seemed to the both of them like half an eternity. Naru separated from him enough to look up into his eyes. "I love you Keitaro," she said in one of the most meaningful voices that he had ever heard her use. Keitaro nuzzled her forehead. "I love you too, Naru"

"Where on earth have you been all this time?"

Keitaro laughed. "Oh boy, do I have some stories to tell you. Even with everything we've experienced so far, you will probably find some of this stuff hard to believe. In any case, I do of course plan on telling you everything as promised, but I think I shall save the bulk of it for when everyone else is around. It will be a lot easier to tell my story once."

* * *

Breakfast that morning was no small affair. Naru had called up Seta and Haruka with the good news, and urged them to come to breakfast. Motoko had been the next one up after Naru, and she seemed even more surprised to see Keitaro than Naru had been.

"It's good to see you again, Keitaro," she said upon first seeing him. He offered her a handshake as he said, "You too, Motoko," but Motoko offered him a hug instead. Naru caught the slight raise of Keitaro's eyebrow at this uncommon gesture from Motoko, but he heartily accepted and returned her hug. Naru also caught the look of puzzlement that was visible through Motoko's genuine pleasure at Keitaro's return. Try as she might, she could not feel a trace of the powerful, chaotic energy swirls that she had always picked up from him since the day he had been attacked, almost a year ago now. In fact, she really sensed nothing at all from him, or rather nothing unusual. He radiated a sense of serenity and power, but no more so than a well-empowered normal person. When they separated, she said to him, "Keitaro ... you seem different ..."

Keitaro nodded and smiled, then took her hands. Still smiling, he closed his eyes. Motoko would have been puzzled had she been given a chance to ponder this, but within a second she felt a surge of energy pass from Keitaro's hands into hers. It was not painful at all, but such was the intensity of it and the fact that it was totally unexpected that Motoko could not help but gasp. _"Such focus!" _she thought to herself as she tried to understand the energies he had sent her._ "So this is what he has been up to ..."_

"Yes," Keitaro said, as if replying to Motoko's thoughts, "that among many other things."

* * *

One by one the other residents had come down, and each had their personal reunion with Keitaro. Suu had been the next one awake, only about 10 minutes behind Motoko, and wasted not a second in launching herself in an all-out greeting attack when she saw Keitaro. Even Motoko had trouble holding her own against Suu when the younger girl's energetic explosiveness peaked, but in an even more impressive manner than had been the case when they had visited him in the hospital, Keitaro soaked up every foot-pound of Suu's energy without the slightest stumble. Neither Naru nor Motoko could help but chuckle slightly at the look on Suu's face as she stared into Keitaro's eyes as she clung to him, her legs wrapped around his stomach and her arms around his neck. Suu had probably never had anyone take her most powerful greeting attack before without being battered halfway to oblivion, let alone without stumbling. Suu was looking at Keitaro as though he was crazy. Coming from Suu of all people, that expression was priceless.

The other meetings that morning were similarly cheerful in nature. Shinobu too seemed to have grown throughout this whole experience. It was expected that she would have blushed and broke into tears when she saw Keitaro again, but in fact her reaction was similar to Naru's - it had taken her a minute to grasp the fact that it was indeed Keitaro before her, but in the end she had simply smiled, given Keitaro a heartfelt embrace, and exchanged some heartfelt words. Kitsune hadn't lost her knack for lightening up any situation, appropriately or otherwise, and had given Keitaro the pal-around props and elbows that one might have expected had he only been gone for a week or two on vacation, not captured by shapeshifting monsters and gone for the better part of a year. But Keitaro's constant letters had lessened the sense of missing for everyone, and it only made sense that Kitsune would have been the one to be most sated by them.

Keitaro got his turn to be surprised when he saw Mutsumi - it hadn't occurred to anyone that he had no way of knowing that Mutsumi was back. In fact he hadn't seen her for a while even before he and Naru had been attacked. Naturally, however, Keitaro was quite happy to see her. Mutsumi's reactions gave no hint as to whether or not she really believed the amazing stories that had been told to her about the misadventures of Keitaro. Then again, Mutsumi's reactions rarely changed a whole lot regardless of the situation, so no one thought too much of it. Haruka and Seta showed up last along with Sara. As Motoko had done, Haruka uncharacteristically offered a hug as her greeting. Seta did too, although such a thing was less uncommon with him. An evil grin had spread across Sara's face as she observed the apparent solidness of Keitaro's demeanor. "Hey part-timer," she began, using the name that Seta occasionally called Keitaro, "I hope you didn't slack off too much while you were on vacation ..." She threw the small plastic replica of a statue that she had been carrying at Keitaro's head with incredible speed given Sara's young age. Keitaro smiled right back at her even before the statue had left her hand, and with seemingly effortless ease caught the speeding projectile between his index and middle finger. "If only you knew," he replied with a wink, tossing the statue back to Sara, albeit much more gently. Sara caught the statue despite having a look on her face not too terribly unlike the one given to him by Suu earlier the same morning for the similar failure of her own attack.

* * *

Everyone enjoyed an extra-special breakfast prepared by Naru and Shinobu together. Everyone stuck to small talk while they ate, but once everyone was finished and after Keitaro had helped clean up the breakfast mess, everyone gathered in the lounge. A brief moment of silence elapsed after everyone had gathered. Noticing that all eyes were on him, Keitaro spoke. "Ah yes," he began with the sort of smile that precedes a copious amount of explaining, "I guess I owe you all a story ..." 


	14. The Short And Sweet Of It

**Author's notes: **

**Just a friendly reminder - the werewolf/vampire lore in this fic is based solely on Underworld, my own interpretations thereof and conjecture on specific elements left unaddressed by the movie, or those not thoroughly explored. Rules set down by White Wolf or any other source of relevant mythology are not applicable.**

* * *

"Unfortunately, to explain my story in full, I must revisit some unpleasant moments from the past," began Keitaro as he took a seat at the head of the circle. Turning to Naru and Kitsune, conveniently sitting aside one another across from him, he said "what do you two remember about the night we were attacked?" Naru and Kitsune looked at each other awkwardly. Deciding to lead them to the answers he was looking for, Keitaro spoke again before either of them said anything. "Let me be more specific. Kitsune, you said you saw strange men being attacked by 'monsters,' did you not?" The Fox's discomfort at being asked to recall that night was apparent. Getting around unpleasant issues with humor was her forté. Confronting them head-on was not.

"Yes," she said, softly but her head held high.

Keitaro chuckled to himself. "After everything we've all been through, I don't imagine there's any real need to beat around the bush with this." Turning to Motoko, he asked her, "your family first made a name for itself hunting 'demons,' did it not?"

Motoko nodded.

"Does anything about 'those that feed upon the blood of the living' or something to that effect ring a bell?"

Now Motoko bore a sign of discomfort, as though she knew what he was getting at, but didn't want to admit it. "Yes," she said. A brief moment of silence followed, then Motoko spoke again. "There was never any record of conflict between them and my family though, not anywhere in our archives. In fact ..." Motoko paused for a moment as her face took on an expression of apprehension, "in some of the older texts ... it almost seemed as though they were portrayed as our allies."

Keitaro's eyebrow shot up. "Allies huh? Well, anyway, we'll come back to that later. But in any case, you know of what I speak?"

"Yes."

Turning back to Kitsune, who was as puzzled as everyone else by this strangely ominous talk between Keitaro and Motoko, Keitaro spoke bluntly. "Those men you saw were vampires."

At a different time and under different circumstances, those words would have fallen on very deaf ears. But Keitaro saw relatively little surprise or disbelief on the faces of anyone in the room. After all, he knew that most of them had seen a human being, either himself or his newfound associates, transform into a fearsome beast with their own eyes. Surely vampires weren't that much of a stretch. True, of those present neither Suu nor Mutsumi had actually seen anything of the sort themselves, but Suu had been present in the environment surrounding these incidents and was pretty sure that Naru and Haruka hadn't just been making it up, and Mutsumi, hard as ever to read, voiced no objections. Seeing his words meet with acceptance, or at least with a lack of opposition, he continued. "And after that, after you found Naru and I. Do you remember what else you saw that night? Naru?" He added, extending the question to her. Both girls nodded slightly. "We call ourselves Lycans, but most humans would call us werewolves." Keitaro noticed expressions seeming to comprise a mix of surprise, fear, and surrealism warp the faces of his friends in varying degrees as he spoke. At first this surprised him, wondering why it was what they had seen themselves in much greater detail that gave them trouble, but then in occurred to him that he had not chosen his words very thoughtfully. _'WE call ourselves Lycans,' _he had said. _'But most HUMANS would call us werewolves.' _Keitaro closed his eyes and bowed his head. "Forgive me," he said. "I guess perhaps I should have started with this to get it out of the way." Looking Naru straight in the eye, he continued. "It was indeed a Lycan that attacked us that night. Or rather, not really attacked us, at least not in the preconceived intention of the word. Used us is rather more accurate. As you no doubt remember, it was with these vampires that the Lycans were after that night, not us. We just had the extraordinarily bad luck of taking our midnight stroll right through their crossfire. And I thought I had the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time _before ..." _he said with a dry chuckle.

Quickly recovering his seriousness, he went on. "The particular Lycan of interest in this case bore the human name of Katsumoto Shinichi. Here in Japan at least, the Lycan community has an interesting way of propagating its most prized lineages. Lycans can breed in the same way that the rest of us do, but as you know, werewolves also are 'born' if you will, through the bite." In saying this he patted his right shoulder. If anyone had had any doubt left about the matter, it evaporated here. "As most or all of you are aware, I was bitten. And thus I became one of them. A Lycan. A werewolf."

Keitaro stopped for a moment to let the weight of his words sink in. His powers of perception were much better than they used to be, but nevertheless he found himself unable to read his friends beyond the obvious emotions that their expressions betrayed. Only Mutsumi, for the first time since she had first been brought into the loop of this line of events, showed any real sign of surprise, muttering her trademark line, "ara ara" under her breath, as though she only just now either grasped everything that had ever been told to her on the issue or only just now began to seriously consider it.

Keitaro took in everyone's reactions for a moment, then smiled. "It's not the end of the world, I promise you. For sure, it will alter my own future in some ways, and I'll understand if none of you ever look at me the same way again, but I hope you all believe me when I say that I have not become some sort of monster. Far more so than not, I'm still the same old Keitaro, just with a few new attributes. But I've learned how to control and harness them now. There will be no more accidents."

Keitaro waited another moment before moving on. "Believe it or not that's just the underlying situation behind the real story I have to tell. But given what most of you have seen for yourselves, I would be hard pressed to believe that what I just said comes as that much of a shock."

Everyone but Mutsumi shook their heads. "Kitsune said something about werewolves a long time ago. We didn't believe her, or at least we didn't want to. But somewhere in the back of our minds I think we were all thinking that it there really was no other explanation for what we had seen," said Naru reservedly. Keitaro nodded in Kitsune's direction. "Kinda makes ya wonder about the other seemingly bizarre and out-there things Kitsune has said, doesn't it?" He said with a wink and a chuckle. This drew some reserved smiles from his audience.

"Moving right along, about those two and three guys that some of you met before I left. The ones I left with." This topic brought a visible increase in attention from everyone, not that anyone had been anything but attentive before. "You see, it's not just the ... condition ... for lack of a better word ... of lycanthropy that is transmitted by a Lycan's bite. Memories from the biting Lycan are passed down as well. This is common to Lycans everywhere. However, Japanese Lycans have found a way to carry that effect much farther than, so far as is known to us, Lycans anywhere else in the world."

"No one knows exactly when Lycans first appeared in Japan, but whenever that was, most Japanese Lycans, or at least the ones that survived to be the foundation of our Lycan community, were Samurai. Through there meditations and skills with Ki manipulation, they eventually discovered a way to exponentially increase the volume and intensity of memory transfer. In time, if was found that skills and knowledge could be transferred through a bit as well, or at least the dormant 'kernels' of them if you will, if the transfer was carefully arranged and with both participants well-prepared, or if the biting Lycan was an experienced elder. The latter case, obviously, was the situation in which I found myself. The Lycan who bit me, Mr. Katsumoto, was a very old Lycan, and regarded as one of the most experienced and skilled in this entire country. He and a few of his closest colleagues had been ambushed while on their way to investigate rumors of foreign vampires coming into Japan and attempting to organize a takeover of Japan for vampires. You see, apparently, elsewhere in the world, vampires and Lycans are at war with one another, and most nations are dominated by one or the other. However, the Japanese populations of both never lost their isolation from the rest of the world, and thus there was no such conflict here. Up until now, at least. But anyway, the ambush almost failed - the attacking vamps were almost annihilated before a drop of Lycan blood was shed. But at least 2 of the attackers escaped the initial battle. Katsumoto alone pursued them. It was probably those three that you first saw that night 8 months ago." He nodded to Kitsune as he spoke the last part. "Katsumoto killed on of them, but was himself wounded in the process. He attacked the last one anyway. This would be the scene at the ditch that myself, Naru and Kitsune no doubt remember quite well. Unfortunately, this last surviving vampire was something of an elder himself, and Katsumoto was already wounded. He lost the element of surprise, and was gunned down. Right about the ditch where we were."

Some semblances of understanding began to appear on everyone's face. "Katsumoto was a very important figure among the local Lycan, and vampire for that matter, communities around here. Elsewhere Lycans and Vampires might be at one another's throats, but here in Japan we have coexisted peacefully, although we really haven't interacted much. This conflict comes to us from the outside. But when Katsumoto knew he was going to die, it was his duty to pass his knowledge, his experience and skills on if in any way possible. We just happened to be within his reach. Ordinarily a Lycan will not hurt the person to whom they are trying to turn as badly as he happened to nail me. But given the fact that he was in the heat of battle and was wounded, I guess he just got a little carried away in the moment. It can happen to the best of us, Lycan or human."

Turning to Motoko now, he continued. "You felt my Ki energies swirling with chaos when I came home from the hospital, did you not?" Motoko nodded.

"As I said, ordinarily when a powerful Lycan is to turn someone, it's an exquisitely orchestrated event, with the time, place and human carefully chosen and prepared. Clearly Mr. Katsumoto did not have the luxury of preparation, and I certainly didn't. Centuries of knowledge, experience and skills were just suddenly dumped into me, to say nothing of the inherent complications that one encounters just when transforming into a Lycan. It was probably only because I had a caring environment to come back to and the support from all of you that those energies growing within me that they manifested themselves in such a positive light, what with me suddenly losing my old clumsy tendencies and learning how to focus and all. I thank you all for that, by the way," he added with a smile and a bow of his head. "But as the next full moon showed me, there were elements of my transformation that could not be denied or avoided. On that note, I owe you all an apology."

"Nonsense, Keitaro. You've got nothing to apologize for," said Naru.

Keitaro took a deep breath. "Actually, I do. You see, even while I was still in the hospital, I began to experience Mr. Katsumoto's memories in my dreams. By the full moon, I had been seeing them while I was wide awake, and they had shown me enough about what had happened to me that I knew what was coming. But I tried to deny it. I refused to accept it. When you and I ran into those two men the night before, Naru, I knew who they were, and what they wanted. It was those same men, plus one other, who came here a couple days later. If you Motoko thought that my energies were easy to detect, I was lit up like a light bulb to other Lycans. They knew that Katsumoto was dead and that the sort of energies that they felt coming from me could only mean that I was the one to whom Katsumoto's memories had been transferred. It was their job to bring me in so that the kernels of Katsumoto's knowledge and abilities could be opened. That, my friends, is where I've been and what I've been doing for the past 8 months. But my point is, had I not refused to accept what fate had dealt me when Naru and I first ran into those men, much could have been avoided. For that, again, I am sorry for my weakness."

Keitaro stayed silent for a moment. Then Naru spoke again. "We can't blame you for that, Keitaro. Who on earth could just accept something like this at the drop of a hat? Nobody got hurt and we're all together again. In my book, nothing else matters."

Keitaro smiled at her. "Thank you for your understanding." He got looks of agreement from the others.

"Anyway, I was pretty apprehensive when I left with those guys 8 months ago. I had no idea what was going to happen. As it turns out, they considered me to be their superior, if you can believe that. I really didn't see much of those particular three men after we arrived at our destination. Rather, there was a small group of people, a group that specialized in helping a newly turned Lycan to tap into the reservoir of knowledge and abilities that was given to him or her. I was treated very well right from the get-go, but they never let me forget for a minute that I was there for a reason - to take Mr. Katsumoto's place in the big scheme of things."

"Does that mean you are going to be leaving again, sempai?" piped in Shinobu.

Keitaro shook his head. "No. Or rather, not right away, and never forever. I will at times have to leave to handle the sort of things that Mr. Katsumoto would have handled. And if anything more is heard of whatever vampire group it is that hopes to claim Japan as their own, I will most definitely have a part to play in the resulting conflict. But it would be wrong to believe that I'm some sort of prisoner or indentured servant of the Lycan community. Far from it. In fact, as I was saying, I seem to have 'inherited' a position of high rank, so few Lycans seem willing to challenge anything I do," he chuckled.

"You talked a lot about absorbing memories and abilities of this Katsumoto .. guy. Does this mean that you are going to turn into some sort of Katsumoto reincarnated?" Asked Kitsune.

Keitaro laughed out loud. "No! Not at all. I swear to you all upon all that is sacred to me that I am still very much 'me.' It's not his personality or consciousness that was passed down to me, only exactly what I said; memories, experiences, and abilities. Think of it like this - it's sort of as if I had seen the things he'd seen, done the things he'd done, and knew the things he knew, but those things only change me as they would if I myself had seen and lived them. Make sense? It's only like adding those elements of him to myself. It's not taking anything of me away."

"So what does all this mean for your future here, with us?" Asked Motoko.

"Honestly, in the long-term at least, I don't know," replied Keitaro. "As I was saying, I do have responsibilities to the interests of the Lycan community to fulfill, and there's no doubt that I will be leaving here for short periods on a semi-regular basis. However, also as I said, being a Lycan is not like being a prisoner, and my position in particular grants me a great deal of personal freedom _and _authority. Rest assured, I left not a sliver of room for doubt with them that no Lycan is ever to come here again without my expressed permission, and that no one other than the few who already do are to even know of this place. Despite your kind acquittals, I will always feel bad about what happened the night before and the day of my leaving. I intend to make sure that nothing of that sort ever happens again. But anyway, I still intend to spend as much time here as I can. Now I realize and understand that my new situation will inevitably change some things. But I hope that in time that we can all settle back down into life as we've known it in the past."

Keitaro looked around the room and could see that most everyone was at a loss for words. He didn't blame them. This ordeal had just kept getting more surreal by the day. Not wanting to drag out the awkward silence, he decided to bring this homecoming speech to an end. "Well," he said as he stood up, "that's the short and the sweet of it anyway. But I'm back now and this time I can virtually assure you that I'm not going anywhere for a while. I imagine you all have your business to attend to, and I've got some settling in to do myself, so why don't we all meet up again for dinner and then maybe go do something fun?" This suggestion met with nods of approval. "Alright then," Keitaro said with a smile, "if I don't see some of you around, then see you all tonight!" With those words, everyone got up and slowly meandered out of the room. Keitaro and Naru went upstairs together.

* * *

Closing Naru's door behind them, the couple looked at one another. Neither of them really knew what to say. Keitaro broke the ice.

"I missed you Naru," he said simply.

Naru's blank face broke into a grin as she gave him a quick kiss. "I missed you too," she said with a wink. "Granted, it wasn't the same as actually being with you in person, but all those letters you kept sending us really helped alot. Made it seem almost like you were only half-gone."

"That's what I was hoping to do," he said, as he sat down on her floor and leaned up against the wall. "I only wish that I could have given you a way to send letters back. It would have made the experience on my end a lot nicer if I could have heard from you."

Naru sat down next to him. "Was it rough?" She asked.

"Hm?"

"Where you were? What you were doing?"

"Not really. Or at least, not after a little while. The first few days weren't the highlight of my life, I'll tell ya that much. But once I was satisfied that you all would be safe and got into the swing of things, I can honestly say that the hardest part was being away from you without any means of getting word from you."

"Why wouldn't they at least let you call here by phone?"

"They didn't want it to be traced."

He noticed the 'what the hell' look on Naru's face. He snickered.

"Hey, you have to admit, with Suu around, it was a possibility."

Naru accepted that answer. But she had more questions. "Just who is this 'they' anyway?"

"The Lycan social structure in Japan is rather feudal in nature. There are 5 main dens - prefectures, if you will - of Lycans in Japan. Each den has its own leadership, and the leaders of all the dens work together on larger issues. Mr. Katsumoto was the #3 man in the largest Japanese den. So I'm still higher up the ladder than most, but I still have my superiors. Fortunately though, a benefit of being near, but not at, the very top of the pecking order means that my presence and involvement is not necessary for every little thing that the den does. Which in turn means that I should be able to go about my life more or less normally, with the occasional 'business trip'."

"So you're really not leaving again anytime soon?"

"Again barring some unanticipated event, I don't think so."

"Good."

Naru and Keitaro embraced each other with a passionate kiss.


	15. Strengthening Bonds

Keitaro and Naru took most of the afternoon to themselves. They stayed behind Naru's locked door for several hours before wandering out, making their way to the kitchen for a drink before making their way outside.

* * *

Suu and Sara had gone about their energetic mayhem with an enthusiasm than had rarely been seen even from them since this whole ordeal had begun. Making their rounds, they first terrorized Motoko as she tried to meditate, and although try as she might Motoko just could not bring herself to get irate with the youngsters, eventually they seemed to decide on their own that she had taken her licks for the evening. Moving on, they next targeted Shinobu for harassment. Shinobu had been sitting underneath a tree making very noble-looking sketches of Keitaro and of Keitaro and Naru together when the devious pair had descended silently from the branches above her to snatch the sketch pad out of Shinobu's hands. Musing over the young artist's work, Suu proclaimed that the pictures must be presented to Keitaro as a welcome home gift. Her face a cherry shade of red, Shinobu put on what was for her an impressive and uncommon display of physical prowess in her pursuit of the sketch thieves. Fortunately for Shinobu's sense of modesty, not only were Keitaro and Naru nowhere to be found, but as they ran wildly around Suu and Sara had crashed into Haruka and Seta instead, themselves parked under a tree sipping tea and reflecting to one another about the fortunes fate had been delivering to them all of late.

It was quickly clear to the adults what the two mischief-makers were up to when a red-faced Shinobu appeared hard on their heels, half-begging, half-threatening something about a sketch pad. Smiling and taking an uplift from the youngsters, Seta took on Sara while Haruka wrestled Suu for Shinobu's artwork. Haruka couldn't remember the last time she'd played with the Hinata residents in this manner. She was surprised at her own sudden playfulness, and in an astonishingly rare abandonment of her usual stoic demeanor, let herself go. Suu was delighted, for while she loved everybody tied to the Hinata Apartments very much, it was mainly Motoko, Sara and Keitaro that she had come to regard as her playmates. Haruka was about the last of her friends that she would ever have expected to so indulge her, and she was reveling in it. Both laughed out loud as they tussled, and they rolled and wrestled around for a good 20 minutes before eventually crashing into Seta and Sara who were doing the same, Haruka and Seta coming face to face on the ground.

Haruka became more aware of herself at that moment, and as her gaze met Seta's raised eyebrow and ear-to-ear grin she could feel the heat rising in her face as a deep blush spread across it. It was not the contact with Seta that was the cause of this, for their relationship had re-developed from the night that Haruka had called Seta in despair as she watched her nephew lie near death on the couch. In these 9 months that had followed that night, it had already gone much farther than lying next to one another on the grass. The relationship between the elder Urashima and her partner paralleled that between Keitaro and Naru in more ways than one, not the least of which was the way in that while their love for one another was no secret from anyone at this point, Haruka in particular was uncharacteristically shy about displaying it too openly. Seta was less shy about doing so, but either out of respect for Haruka's only apparent weakness or fear for his own well-being for failure to do so, he rarely pushed his luck. However, as Naru eventually had, Haruka was losing her insecurity about admitting her own feelings, so it really wasn't that that brought the blood to her cheeks either. Long before she'd even met Seta, Haruka had already developed the stoic and emotionless demeanor that she would later become so famous for. Even before she'd reached Shinobu's age it had become a rare sight for her to openly display any kind of emotion, and for her to romp and play and express pleasure with such child-like innocence was already virtually unheard of. Such had become her comfort zone. Being caught outside of it was still something that made her uncomfortable. But she was working on that too. After a moment, her expression of embarrassed exposure simply melted away into a light smile, but her blush remained. Sitting up, she gently took the sketchpad out of the now puzzled Suu's hands and motioned to the watching Shinobu to come and get it. Shinobu seemed interested at what she had just seen, but with a smile she excused herself and heading back towards the apartments. A moment's silence passed before Suu, still brim full of energy, slam-tackled Haruka again, prompting Sara to do the same to Seta, and the cheerful free-for-all continued.

* * *

Afterwards Shinobu had headed back to the apartments and went into the kitchen. Dinner was still several hours away but cooking or preparing to cook wasn't just her designated duty but something she genuinely enjoyed. She found Kitsune already there, with a selection of her favorite sake lined out on the countertop. "Shinobu, what impeccable timing! What's gonna be for dinner? I'd like to contribute the spirits for the evening and I'm having trouble deciding what kind, so maybe I'll just take the shortcut and go with whatever best suits your contribution to tonight's festivities," she finished with a cheerful grin.

Shinobu smiled back. "I was actually just coming her to work on that. Why don't we work on it together?"

Kitsune gave a look of muffled excitement. "I've been meaning to give the ol' cooking thing a try, I guess this is as good a chance as any!"

Shinobu had her doubts that the famously lazy Fox really had thought about doing the cooking in the past, but she had no reservations about sharing the pleasure tonight. Giving a playful smirk, she said, "alright Kitsune, let's see what you've got!"

* * *

Motoko eventually succeeded in getting in a good meditation session after Suu and Sara had gone on to seek other victims. The young swordswoman of course shared the happiness of the others that their little family was once again whole and happy, but she also had some mixed feelings. She was intrigued with everything that had happened, and in particular she was fascinated with the brief burst of energy that Keitaro had shared with her. Motoko had never felt anything like it before. As she sat in meditation she probed her memories for anything she'd ever learned about shapeshifters or anything interpretable as vampires. She had focused most of her energy on mastery of the sword and as such had not studied as hard on the lessons of 'demons.' But nevertheless she had not totally ignored those lessons. She knew that the memories were in there somewhere.

* * *

By late evening everyone began to congregate back in the lounge. By about 8 pm everyone was there except for Keitaro and Naru.

* * *

"Dinner should almost be ready, you know. The guest of honor shouldn't be late," said Naru. Keitaro and herself lay in the grass on the other side of the apartments from where everyone else had been. They lay with their feet pointing in opposite directions, with their heads resting on one another's shoulder.

Keitaro chuckled. Raising his hand he starting poking Naru's forehead. "What, I take a little vacation and now I'm no longer the love of your life _and_ your landlord, but just a guest?" He said with playful fake exasperation.

Naru grabbed his finger as it came down to poke her again and twisted it a little.

"Ow, ow, hey!"

"Don't mess with me pal. I don't care what new superpowers you have, get out of line with me and I'll make you sorry." But she could not help starting to laugh a little at the idea of her bringing this mighty Lycan warrior under control with a simple finger lock, in doing so inadvertently letting him go. It was all the opportunity he needed. He now grabbed her arm and rolled her over, so that she was now on her stomach and looking right down into his eyes.

"There's nothing you could do that would make me sorry. I love you too much."

Naru's smile changed from one of playfulness to one of sincerity. "Well since you put it that way, I guess I don't mind if you mess with me a little ..." Turning her head sideways, she planted her lips onto his. Keitaro reached up and put his arms around her back. They embraced so for a few minutes, and then Keitaro gently pushed her up.

"But on the other hand, you do have a point. We shouldn't make everyone wait." Standing up, he offered her his elbow. "Shall we?" he said with a smile and a wink.

Naru returned the gesture and accepted his offer. "Indeed we shall."

* * *

"Alright everyone, get ready for the Super Shinobu-Kitsune Dinner Special!" Shouted an obviously inebriated Fox as she struck a "ta-da!" pose. Out from the kitchen came Shinobu, carrying a covered tray. The look of amused apprehension on her face was unmistakable. As she set the tray down in the center of the table, she put on a forced smile that made everyone bite their tongues to stop from bursting out with laughter. "I must relinquish full credit for this item to Kitsune. Her kitchen genius surprised me, I'd have never come up with this on my own in a thousand years!" She said with a matching forced cheerfulness. A few snickers escaped from the residents seated around the table despite their best efforts. Only Suu, who was always happy to get her hands on anything edible, and Kitsune herself seemed oblivious to Shinobu's warning. Keeping the forced smile on her face, Shinobu lifted the cover off the tray.

The appetizers that lay before everyone looked deceptively innocent. They appeared to be some kind of small fried rolls. The barely suppressed snickers from the others turned into a show of eyeballs darting back and forth between one another, each hoping that someone else would take the first bite. As Kitsune and Shinobu took their respective seats as well, the younger girl never taking that humorous forced smile off her face, it became clear that someone would have to make a move to avoid hurting Kitsune's feelings. Whatever these things turned out to be, she had taken the time and effort to make them after all, so they least they could do was to try them. It was Keitaro who moved first.

"Alrighty then, let's put your culinary powers to the test," he said, as he reached for one of the rolls. One by one, the others followed his lead until everyone except the still smiling Shinobu. Keitaro and Suu both popped theirs into their mouth. The others made as if to do the same, but stalled as they waited for reactions. They did not have to wait long. After a couple quick chews Keitaro blinked strongly, and his face began to contort with an unreadable expression that he nonetheless was obviously trying to conceal. Slowly and deliberately he resumed chewing for a few more moments, until his eye twitched and his head cocked slightly to the right, and he swallowed. Suu's reaction was predictably less subtle. The usual face of cheerful pleasure that she usually wore when eating vanished after her first couple of chews. Without warning, she spat the remains across the table, narrowly missing Sara who sat across from her. Everyone else quickly put their own rolls down.

"Kitsune ... may I ask what these things are?" Asked Keitaro, as Suu chugged down her large glass of milk in a few huge gulps.

Kitsune took her eyes off Suu, where they had been directed since her overly frontal rejection of the roll. Through the alcoholic influence the indignance in her voice was apparent.

"Hmph - like _she's _anyone to diss food," she said under her breath as she turned to face Keitaro. "What's so bad about leftovers anyway? I eat them all the time!" As if to prove something, she popped a roll into her mouth then, smiling as though to show that it really was good and that they must have been mistaken.

This drew raised eyebrows from everyone at the table.

"Then these rolls are ..." began Keitaro.

"Made up of all the leftovers I could find? Yes, they are! I mean, it's not like anyone was going to eat them otherwise, and it was a lot faster to use something that was already half-made than to make it from scratch!" Finished Kitsune.

"Did you notice anything funny about these particular leftovers while you were cooking them? Like a strange or possibly unpleasant smell for instance?"

Shinobu spoke up again before Kitsune could answer. "I think this conversation should wait - possibly for at least a day or two. You did, after all, actually finish yours," she said as she nodded to Keitaro. "Anyway, are we ready for the main course?"

Everyone, even the indignant Kitsune, answered yes.

* * *

After bringing out the rest of the meal, Shinobu took her seat. As everyone was saved from their hungry by Shinobu's reassuringly superb mastery of cooking, Naru, who sat next to Shinobu, whispered into her ear, "Hey, if you knew that Kitsune's rolls were that bad, why didn't you secretly replace them with something delicious of yours?"

Shinobu tried to be subtle as she whispered back. "Well, Kitsune was so proud of herself for making a contribution, she never left the kitchen long enough for me to do that, and I just didn't have the heart to do anything about it too openly. Besides ..." she paused.

"Besides what?"

Shinobu put on her goofy forced smile one more time. She never was very good at hiding her true opinions. "I didn't think anyone would make it so far as to swallow it."

* * *

Kitsune quickly got over her indignation as she dug into Shinobu's work, and the rest of the meal passed with exceedingly good cheer. The conversation was as though none of the extraordinary things that had gone on in the past 9 months had ever taken place, save for the dramatic improvement in relationships. For the first time ever neither Keitaro nor Naru displayed the slightest bit of embarrassment or discomfort when their relationship was discussed, not even when Kitsune threw in her customarily riské notes on the matter. Kitsune seemed half-pleased and half-disappointed when her comments failed to garner anything more gratifying than a devilishly angelic look from one or both of them.

Naru brought up the topic of Haruka and Seta, and also for the first time, a conversation on the matter took place in the presence of everyone else. Seta's and Haruka's reactions were so similar to the ones that were given by Keitaro and Naru not too terribly long ago, minus Naru's formerly customary violence, that very quickly both Naru and Keitaro broke out into laughter almost simultaneously. No one, not even Seta, missed the connection, certainly not when he saw the looks that Keitaro and Naru exchanged.

* * *

Everyone was having so much fun just sitting around the table, chatting and picking at the cake that Shinobu had baked that the first attention paid by anyone to the time was when yawning began to break the flow of conversation.

"I guess we should probably call it a night. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm bushed," said Kitsune as she stood up and stretched.

Shinobu agreed. "Me too."

No dissent was raised by anyone, and so everyone stood up.

"Before you all leave," said Keitaro, "I just wanted to thank you all for your warm welcome. It's good to be home."

Various statements like "it's good to have you back" and "don't mention it" answered him.

Keitaro smiled. "Anyway, I'd like to spend some time with each of you individually over the next week or so. I'd like to get caught up with you all."

* * *

After helping Shinobu clean up the dinner mess, he had gone back to his room and found Naru waiting for him there. She had already changed out of her clothes and was wearing her robe, and had already laid out his bed roll and was kneeling beside it.

"I hope you've had a good time today," said Naru softly.

"Indeed I have. It feels really good to be here again." He walked over to her and sat down beside her, putting his arm around her. "Believe it or not, my newest set of compatriots make pretty decent companions themselves once you get to know them. And those Lycan babes ... wow ... I mean, you know how much I love strong women, and let me tell, you, those ..." Keitaro watched Naru's twitching eyebrow out of the corner of his eye with great amusement, and by the time she silenced him by throwing him down on his bed he had been close to breaking down laughing anyway. He did his best to keep a straight face but was not doing a very good job of it. The look on Naru's face wasn't helping. A year ago the same slightly insane smile and twitching eyebrow would have chilled him down to the bone, but under the present circumstances the only thing he feared was drawing blood from his tongue in his effort not to laugh.

"Someone just failed his Naruology 101 exam with flying colors," she said, in a voice that also would have been anything but funny a year ago but now was twisting his funny bone to the brink of snapping.

"Oh, forgive me sensei, wha ..." He tried to sit up as he spoke, and for the second time this evening his words were cut short by a little direct action from Naru. Slapping her hand on his chest, she pushed him back flat. Holding him down like so, she swung her leg up and over him so that she was now sitting atop him, and pushed her other hand down on his chest, thus completing his pinning.

"Consider this ... a _make-up _exam ... and if you want to pass _now_ you'd better impress the hell out of me ..."

Keitaro was _pretty _sure that he should be excited by those words, but a very energetic kiss from Naru cut off anything he might have said.

* * *

Elsewhere within the Hinata Apartments, another couple was sharing an intimate moment as well, albeit with a more serious undertone beneath it all. Haruka lay on her back with her hands under her head and a thin stream of tears running out of her eyes. A rather longing smile was on her face though.

"Only for you would something like that be such an emotionally traumatizing experience," said Seta with a wink, as he lie next to her on his side, facing her, propped up on his arm.

Haruka squinted her eyes at him and snorted. Only Seta, and possibly Keitaro, would reply with something like that to what they'd been talking about.

"You're going to wind up being physically traumatized if that's as serious as you can ever take anything deep we ever talk about," she said back to him, but in a voice that bore the unmistakable tint of playfulness.

"And you're going to wind up a psychotic wreck if today marks the only time in your life that you ever lighten up a little and let yourself have some fun. Oh, wait ... I guess you already are a psyc ..."

As the scene began to mirror the one that had just unfolded a few rooms away, Haruka stopped Seta in mid-sentence, by swiftly turning on her side to face him and holding her finger in front of his face in a clear gesture of warning. However, any effect such a gesture might have had was largely lost by the rest of her body language. Her lips contorted as they tried to contain the laughs that fought to be released. The similar state of Seta's face onto which she gazed quickly weaken her resistance, and she turned her face down into her pillow to laugh while Seta just chuckled openly.

"Feels good to laugh, doesn't it? You really should do it more often."

Turning her head to face his again, she said in between what for her was incomprehensively girly giggles, "I can't help it. I don't remember the last time I had as much fun as I did today. So sue me."

Seta was beaming with pleasure too. Slowly but surely he had gotten Haruka to open up to him again, but he didn't want to be her only escape from her own emotional firewalls. Without being too frontal about it he had been trying very hard to get Haruka to let the rest of their little de facto family in on her softer side as well. But where he'd met with very limited success for many months, or indeed, years, that crazy girl Suu had succeeded brilliantly, and unknowingly, in just a few hours. It had never occurred to him that a little session with an irrepressible youngster might be just the tool for cracking her shell, or maybe he just figured that in all the time that Haruka and Suu have known one another that it had been tried before. Then again, it had taken some rather unique circumstances to get Haruka out onto the grass with Suu, Sara and himself and establish the playful feeling of the moment. But whatever. He didn't really care about the how's and the why's. If it got the woman he loved so much to allow herself to experience such a wonderful thing that most people took for granted, it was A-OK with him. Putting his other arm around her, he surprised her by changing his expression from his usual high-humor one to an expression of serious and absolute sincerity.

"I can't tell you how good it made me feel to see you so happy." He said quietly. Haruka even thought she heard a small quiver in his voice. Rather taken aback by Seta's sudden reversion to seriousness, itself relatively uncommon for him, her smile quickly melted away and was replaced with a look of being uncertain about what she was supposed to say next. But Seta had one more thing to say.

"I love you, Haruka." He managed in a now obviously choked up voice.

His words sent a surge of heat rushing across her face. Granted, it was not the first time he had said those words to her, and what was about to happen was certainly not the first time they'd gotten physically intimate with one another, but although his usual demeanor was one of lighthearted humor it was almost as unusual for Seta to openly express any strong emotion other than pleasure as it was for Haruka. There was more raw emotion carried by those three words this time than she could ever remember hearing out of him. Her tears began to flow again, much more freely this time.

"Seta ... I ... I..." she stammered.

Seta didn't make her struggle for words. A few of his own tears mixed with hers as he kissed her. She closed her eyes as she embraced him, slowly rolling him on top of her.

There was love, and there was passion, but there had been both of those things before. But tonight there was something more that neither of them could put into words. The two of them, Haruka much more so than Seta but Seta too to some degree, were getting around to crashing through their emotional barriers much later in life than Keitaro and Naru were. They had made love many times before in all the years that they'd been acquainted, with widely varying degrees of physical and psychological satisfaction, but never before had they tapped so deeply into this reservoir of feeling. It was a culmination of all the work they'd been doing on their relationship since the night of Keitaro's attack, and by the end of the night another bridge was crossed.

* * *

Meanwhile, there was one more resident who was quite active while all this was going on. She was alone, but in a very different way she was every bit as charged up as were the busy couples. By first daylight that which was the source of her excitement was nearing completion. A night without sleep following a long day of hard play and hard work would have left most people dead on their feet, but she somehow found even more energy as the opportunity to test her brainchild drew nearer. Somehow she had managed to take some consideration for her intended test subject with regards to said individual's sleep requirements, but as the sun cleared the horizon she could wait no longer. With a grin that would probably have been frightening to anyone had anyone been unfortunate enough to be awake to see it, she stood in her doorway as she slowly opened the door with her foot. The bulk of what she carried might almost have hidden her frightening grin from any potential lookers had there been many residents shorter than her, and it's weight would have impressed any lookers as well for the seeming ease with which she carried it. But nothing would have impressed anyone more than it's intended use. A truly frightening cackle escaped her lips at the thought, despite her best efforts to stay quiet. _"Yes,"_ she thought to herself, _"they will see that soon enough."_


	16. Suu's Day

Motoko's heart skipped a beat as the roar of automatic gunfire shocked her out of sleep. Her conditioning quickly took over though, and in less than two whole seconds her thought process went into jump-start overdrive, tracing the sound to its direction of origin. Very quickly the realization hit her. This was far from the first time that a disturbance of some sort or another had radiated from that direction. _"Holy shit, that's coming from Suu's room!" _She thought to herself. As if to prove her point, the gunfire ceased at that moment and Motoko heard Suu's unmistakable wail, followed by another roar, this one much more organic in nature and seemingly even more threatening. That was more than enough stimulus to get Motoko's instincts fired up to full power - grabbing her sword from its resting place beside her, she flung herself up and out of bed and out her door in one swift, fluidic movement.

* * *

Motoko was of course not the only resident to be rudely awakened by the noise. Naru had shot upright to a startled and dazed state as the first shots rang out, and equally quickly, she found that Keitaro was no longer at her side. As the gunfire turned into the sound of female voice wailing and then the bellowing roar, her face lost much of its color. She too leapt out of bed and ran in the direction of the sound.

* * *

Motoko, Seta and Haruka arrived outside of Suu's door at the same time. By the look of things Seta and Haruka had not bothered to redress themselves after their intimate evening the night before and had gone to sleep as-is. The haphazard way in which they had grabbed whatever clothing was at hand, some pieces of which looked as though they had found the wrong owner, would probably have been the source of great humor under different circumstances. They had, however, managed to grab a hold of the matching pistols that they'd taken out of storage after the incident with the Lycan delivery boys 8 months ago. As it was, Motoko, the only other person present at that time, didn't take much notice of it, for there was a more pressing matter at hand. Suu's voice, what they had thought was a wail, was actually ... laughter? Behind that sound they could hear a low, raspy, growling sort of breathing. Weapons at the ready, Seta and Haruka kicked in the door just as Naru arrived on the scene and the next volley of gunfire rang out.

The pair had a great deal of reaction/judgment drilling under their belts, both training and combat, and as such, they did not start shooting immediately despite the extraordinary sight that met their eyes. A Lycan in wolf form stood opposite of Suu, clad from the neck down in some sort of armor - it looked almost like snake skin in a way, for it was all a sandy shade of brown and seemed to be comprised of smaller scales with much larger plates covering areas of the chest, back, arms and legs. It faced Suu with what might have been a snarl or what might not have been - transformed Lycans didn't look as though they possessed too great a variety of facial expressions. Almost as unsettling a sight though was Suu herself. She was wearing armor too, something that looked almost identical to that worn by the Lycan, plus a helmet. Pressed against her shoulder was an assault rifle, the business end of which emitted a fearsome muzzle flash as she emptied another magazine on full-auto. Bullets bounced harmlessly off of the Lycan's armor. Or harmlessly at least for the Lycan - ricocheting bullets caused the four bystanders to momentarily retreat behind the wall of the doorway. As Suu's rifle fell silent again, they stepped back into the open doorway.

Tossing her rifle aside, Suu got one of those smiles on her face that she usually reserved for Keitaro or Motoko when she was about to tackle them. Motoko recognized the look immediately. "Suu, no, don't do it!" She shouted. But it was too late. The young girl was already airborne as Motoko's words came out.

"Shit," hissed Haruka under her breath, and quickly fired two rounds at the Lycan's head.

* * *

Shinobu huddled in her room, torn by hesitation. She had a thought to find out what was going on and to help if she could, but at the same time she was riddled with fear and the knowledge that she would be of little use in a situation like this. Kitsune had gone to sleep with earplugs in and her door locked, as she often did after a long and alcoholic night such as last night so as to ensure that she would not be woken up before she had slept off the consequences of her hedonism, and as such, she remained oblivious to the whole situation. Mutsumi too, though she had not drunk herself into oblivion the night before, was just, well, Mutsumi, and she too managed to sleep soundly through the ruckus. By fortunate coincidence, Seta and Haruka had run into Sara on their way out of their room, and had hastily locked her into another nearby room before making their way to the source of the noise.

* * *

After Haruka's shots rang out, Suu turned her head to face her with an puzzled look as she flew through the air at the Lycan. With superhuman reflexes the Lycan had raised its arm the moment Haruka had spoken, and her bullets too bounced off the armor with no effect whatsoever. By then Suu was on top of the Lycan and Haruka could not risk shooting again. Suu connected with the Lycan's chest, their armor clanking as she hit. Quickly, she scrambled around the back of the Lycan so that she was sitting upon its shoulders. Wrapping her arms around the Lycan's face, her bare fingers practically touching the thumb-sized fangs, she shouted at the onlookers with a cheerful smile, "It's alright guys, it's just Keitaro!" As looks of dismay crossed everyone's face, Suu said with another puzzled expression, "what, don't you recognize him?" Looking down at the Lycan to which she clung, she said with the same cheerful voice and happy smile, albeit with a touch of belittlement, "geez, you'd better shift back into your human form, I don't think these guys can see through your disguise!"

At her words, the Lycan's body began to shrink in a series of controlled but rather jerky movements. Hair, fangs and claws retracted. Color faded from a dark gray to that of human skin. Incredibly, the armor seemed to shrink with him, though the larger plates remained the same size, and by the time the shift was complete it did look almost goofy for how large it appeared on Keitaro's now much smaller frame. But as he stretched, as he finished the change, it clearly didn't inhibit his movement at all. A sheepish look appeared on his face and he kneeled down. "Uh ... sorry guys ... I didn't mean for this to turn into a show."

Seeing no reaction from his words, he continued. Adding a sheepish smile to his expression, he pointed at Suu and said in a strangely innocent-sounding voice, "she just told me that she wanted me to try on this armor she designed for me. She didn't say anything about testing it on the spot." He tried to smile wider as he waited for a reaction. Suu, on the other side of the room, but her hand behind her head, rapped on her helmet lightly and laughed a little.

"It's true. I wanted it to be a surprise!" She said, with her usual tone of voice that could easily be mistaken for innocence by someone who didn't know her.

The onlookers still seemed at a complete loss for words, and silence always did grate on Suu's nerves. Walking over to Keitaro, she patted the shoulder plate of the armor that now stuck out a good foot past his body, and motioned for him to stand up.

"Overlapping trauma plates made from a combination of multiple layers of a special blend of titanium and an extremely strong and yet relatively lightweight ceramic material of my own design, elastically woven together with kevlar and aramid to offer both added protection and the ability to cope with the dramatic changes in size and shape that take place whenever he changes form!" She began, pushing and pointing to the various components on Keitaro as she enthusiastically spoke of her invention. "As you can see, it renders the wearer virtually invulnerable where he or she is covered by it. I figured if Keitaro is going to be out fighting vampires or whatever that he deserves a little extra protection!"

Keitaro seemed content to let Suu do the explaining, and after she had finished using him as a model he slowly began taking the armor off. Fortunately for his desire not to cause even more of a scene, during his time at the Lycan camp he had acquired some extremely baggy and stretchy pants that were able to survive his changing forms intact. "And I thank you for that again, Suu," he said meekly. "I'm sorry for the scene," he continued, now addressing the four onlookers. Naru was the first of them to speak.

"Don't you think that testing your experimental body armor on a living subject is a little dangerous, Suu!" Cried Naru.

Suu just laughed. "Nah, Keitaro's a werewolf! Lead and copper bullets can't hurt him! Watch!" She drew a pistol from a hidden holster concealed behind a plate on her right leg and fired a single round through Keitaro's now unprotected left thigh.

Everyone's eyes bulged out in shock at Suu's action, but none more than those of Keitaro himself. "AAAARRrrrrgghhh!" He said, starting out as a scream but closing as clenched-tooth groan. For the first time since his coming home from the hospital, they saw him stumble and fall, landing on all fours.

"SUU!" All four of them shouted together, and Naru ran to his side.

"Keitaro! Are you alright?" She half-asked, half-screamed.

Keitaro didn't answer right away. Still clenching his teeth, he closed his eyes. As he seemed to expend considerable mental energy, Naru and the others watched with even more dismay as the gaping hole in his leg began to close up before their very eyes. After perhaps 20 seconds, the wound had closed, and the only obvious sign that it had ever been there was the bloody pant leg and the large rip in the center of it. Unclenching his teeth but with his eyes still closed, he said softly, "I'm sure they would have taken our word for it, Suu."

Naru tried to shake off what had just happened and turned to Suu with an exasperated expression. "What the hell was that all about!" She said to her in much the same tone as before.

"What did I tell you? See, he's not hurt at all! He can do much better than that too, watch _this_ ..." she began, and started to raise her pistol.

Keitaro's eyes shot open at her words. With the sort of blurring speed they had seen him and others use before, he snatched her gun out of her hand and spun onto his feet. With a kindly but rather exasperated expression of his own, he said, "it may not leave a mark, but it still hurts like hell. I think they get the point."

Suu looked puzzled at why Keitaro didn't want to show off his abilities as he reservedly handed her back her gun. Looking over at Naru and then to the others, he blushed slightly. "Anyway, I apologize once more for the commotion. Show's over now, I promise."

"Yes, the show was almost over for good, mister," said Haruka with undisguised anger in her voice. Ejecting the clip from her own weapon she tossed it to Keitaro. He caught it and examined it. He raised an eyebrow.

"Silver," he said simply.

"That's right. Silver. Perhaps you've forgotten about that little run-in we had with your buddies the night you left. It had occurred to us that they might come back. At that time we were still a little shaky on the whole werewolf thing, but we decided that if it was even a possibility that we should be prepared to deal with it. Your show-off session could have cost you your life. Yours, and mine ... how do you think I'd have felt if I'd killed you just now!"

Keitaro could see where she was going with this. He lowered his head slightly as he spoke. "You're right, this was irresponsible of me. I momentarily forgot that I've been away and that you all have not really been given much of a chance to get used to ... well, to the new me. I'm sorry."

Haruka's anger seemed somewhat disarmed by his words. He tossed the clip back to her and she jammed it back into the gun. Softening her own expression, she spoke. "Yeah, this will definitely take some getting used to. But in the meantime, if you're going to be pulling off a stunt like this again, at least warn us ahead of time so someone doesn't get the wits scared out of them or so someone else doesn't get a skull full of silver, alright?"

Keitaro started to protest. "Sure, but just for the record this particular instance really wasn't my fa..."

Haruka's closed eyes and raised finger once again demonstrated their incredible powers of persuasion.

Keitaro decided not to press his luck. His aunt did, after all, still have a clip full of silver bullets at her side. He gently bowed. "Right. Sorry. You got it."

Haruka and Seta exchanged unreadable looks, and the two of them quietly left the room. Talking quietly to Seta as they went back to their room, she said, "get used to it, my ass ... oh yeah, maybe we should go let Sara out ..."

* * *

Motoko had remained silent the whole time, and now she was alone with Keitaro and Naru. She was still stupefied, but not for the obvious reason. At no time during this incident had she been able to sense Keitaro's energy. He had obviously wielded a lot of it but she couldn't feel it. At all. Never before had her senses failed to give her any hint or indication of something even close to this happening, let alone when it was right down the hallway from where she slept. How could he possibly conceal so much energy? She felt as though she had been blinded, that she was out of touch, and such a feeling disturbed her greatly. It showed on her face.

"Are you alright Motoko?" came Keitaro's voice. Suddenly Motoko became aware that she was still standing with her sword at the ready. Shaking it off, she sheathed her blade.

"I'm sorry Motoko. I didn't mean to cause a problem," he said.

"No ... it's ... I'm fine." Motoko politely bowed at him and slowly turned and walked away.

A look of understanding crossed Keitaro's face. Turning to Naru, he spoke again. "I apologize to you too. I swear I didn't know that Suu was planning a circus act."

The slight unease on Naru's face was apparent despite her best effort to hide it. True, this was not the first time she'd seen Keitaro in his wolf form and she had known for some time now that he had these abilities, but it was still rather unnerving to see.

"It's alright, Keitaro. Let's just get you changed and get ready for breakfast, shall we?"

* * *

Motoko slowly closed her door behind her as she returned to her room. _"I thought I had a grasp on things until Keitaro came back," _she thought to herself. She was still fuming to herself at the fact that she was as baffled by Keitaro's abilities as was everyone else, but she in particular was particularly struck by his ability to control and conceal his powerful Ki. Or more so than struck by that fact, angered by it. But not at him, at herself. If she was blind to something like this, she wondered, what else was there that she was completely clueless to? _"Wait a minute," _her thoughts continued. _"He must be aware of the extent of his own powers. I suppose I could just ask him. He said that he wanted to spend time with us all individually anyway ..."_

_

* * *

_

Breakfast was a pretty ordinary affair considering. The inevitable questions from Sara and Shinobu were answered honestly and as-a-matter-of-factly. Sara merely blinked and shook her head as though the answers just bounced off of her, and Shinobu got a look of confusion and almost fear, but the calming look Keitaro flashed her seemed to put her at ease a little. If Kitsune or Mutsumi were particularly unnerved, they didn't show it. Indeed, the only bit of the story that really seemed to surprise either of them (though no one else) was that they had managed to sleep through the short but very loud incident. Keitaro was pleased - he had hoped, but certainly not expected, that his friends would be able to accept his new situation without undue difficulty. But unless they had all become masters of deception in his absence he hadn't seem much more out of them than the minimal sort of unease that had to be considered inevitable given the things they had seen. Suu certainly didn't seem to have the slightest bit of trouble with it.

* * *

"Naru, if I ask you a question, will you promise to answer truthfully or not at all?" Asked Motoko as the two sat in her room talking. After breakfast they had both requested an audience with Keitaro, but seemingly more to his despair than their own he had told them that Suu had already made him promise her this day as her own. The devilish look of excitement on her face combined with a look that almost looked like fear on his meant that neither girl could feel much other than sympathy for him and amusement for themselves. But Keitaro true to his word had reluctantly allowed himself to be dragged up the stairs by Suu, who almost literally seemed to drag him up as she had been positively leaping with excitement with her new test subject. "I'm glad that Keitaro can heal so quickly," she had said, "that way I can skip most of those inhibiting safety precautions I usually take ..." Keitaro had whimpered at her words but swallowed hard and stayed with her. Afterwards Naru and Motoko had started pondering amongst one another what Suu had in mind for Keitaro with a combination of amusement and morbid curiosity, and had wandered up to Motoko's room as she got ready for her morning training routine. In the end, they had stayed their talking for some time.

Naru smiled lightly. "About Keitaro, right?"

Motoko nodded. "I can't figure him out. He obviously has extraordinary abilities but I can't feel his energies anymore. If we hadn't seen what we had seen this morning one would be hard-pressed to see any obvious sign that he ... is what he is."

Naru's smile faded. "And you're wondering if I have any special insights for you?"

Motoko nodded again.

"I doubt I can tell you anything that you don't already know. If anything I might have asked you for an insight."

Motoko cocked an eyebrow. "He won't talk about it?"

"No, he's very thoroughly answered every question I've ever asked him on the matter," Naru sighed. "Or at least, thoroughly except for any names of his 'comrades,' as he calls them, or anything about where exactly he was all that time," she added with a weak chuckle. "I just ... haven't asked too many questions."

"Does it frighten you to know too much?"

"I don't know. Please believe him and me when we say that he is still very much the same old Keitaro that we've all grown to love. As I'm sure you've noticed, his little morphing sessions apart, the only changes that have taken hold on him since this whole thing started have been for the good."

Motoko nodded her head once in acknowledgement.

"But," Naru continued, looking away slightly, "I'd be a liar, and probably a bad one at that, if I said that it didn't run my nerves through a meat grinder getting another close look at his ... well, I guess we might as well try to get used to calling it his 'wolf form.' Don't know what else to call it."

Naru noticed that Motoko seemed a bit stuck on her next thought. "I'm sure he'd be happy to tell you anything you want to know if you just ask him yourself. He did actually mention that he figured you of all of us would have some questions for him on the matter," she offered.

Motoko nodded another acknowledgement, but it was quickly clear to Naru that that was not really what Motoko was wondering.

"You're wondering about us? About Keitaro and I?" Naru asked after a brief moment of silence.

"Yes."

"As I said, the only way he's really any different than he was when we first met him is that he's a lot less clumsy and a lot more focused. He definitely ..."

Naru's words were cut off by a loud crash, again coming from Suu's room. "WHAT THE FU..." Keitaro's shout was drowned out by yet another loud crash, and then another, followed by thump-thump-thump of a foot pursuit through the hallway. Motoko and Naru looked at each other with wide open eyes, but before they had too much time to think about what to do Motoko's door burst open and Keitaro, wearing a face of genuinely disturbed fear, whipped himself inside and slammed the door behind him, holding it shut with his back.

"How on earth have you managed to contain this lunatic all this time, Motoko?" He said very quickly, sounding like someone who was fleeing from certain death. Without waiting for an answer from the dumbfounded swordswoman or his equally dumbfounded girlfriend, he continued in the same tone and at the same speed. "Great moons of Jupiter, and you people think _I'm_ scary! You know what she ..!"

"Keitaroooo! Get back here! We're not done yet! You _promised!"_ Came Suu's wail, the source of which was clearly getting closer.

"Thanks for teaching me the hazards of making promises to crazed scientists!" hollered Keitaro back through the door, and he ran over to Motoko's window, flung it open, and leapt out without missing a beat. No sooner had his head disappeared from view than Motoko's door was kicked open again. Suu stood there, wearing the same armor as before, with an expression of longing disappointment. In her hands she carried what appeared to be some kind of probe - albeit something that was quite large for a probe - the function of which neither Motoko nor Naru cared to speculate upon. Suu wielded it like a weapon, and indeed, it looked as though it could have been used interchangeably as such. She might have asked where Keitaro had gone, but the flabbergasted expressions on Motoko and Naru that traced the line from the open window to her answered her question.

Suu _was_ a master of deception, and had been for as long as any of the Hinata residents had known her, although she didn't mean to be and was probably not even aware of it. The pitiful wailing of Keitaro's name that she screamed out as she too leapt out the window and took off after him made sounded heart-wrenchingly innocent, like that of a little kid chasing someone who'd just stolen her candy. Not for the first time, or the last, did the older girls wonder how their eyes and their ears could possibly tell such different stories about the same person.


	17. Motoko's Questions, Keitaro's Answers

Suu was gone on her pursuit of Keitaro for a good hour or two, but Keitaro's new abilities allowed him to elude her and after fruitlessly scouring the surrounding area Suu had come home seemingly almost heartbroken. She then pouted in her room as she poured over what "data" she had succeeded in obtaining from Keitaro for the rest of the evening until dinner. Keitaro had stayed well away for a couple hours, and upon his return, he had scuttled up to Naru's room where the two of them also stayed until dinner time.

At the table, Suu grumbled to herself as she ate until her and Keitaro made eye contact for the first time. Scowling, she suddenly blew a loud raspberry at him, and while he blushed uncomfortably, everyone else gagged on their food and a few spat it out, seeking to avoid choking as a burst of hysterical laughter swept the table. Suu looked as though she was trying to stay angry, but laughter was both her greatest strength and her greatest weakness and she quickly broke down into laughter too despite herself. Keitaro hadn't realized that everyone else knew about Suu's little experimentation attempt from earlier and as such a touch of his old modesty shone through and his blush spread across his whole face. Fortunately for him the laughing fit didn't last too long, for Haruka and Seta excused themselves on account of an early day tomorrow and the need to get a good night's sleep. With the circle thus broken, Suu quickly returned to her usual pleasant and energetic self and with Sara she too took off. Keitaro never completely lost his blush, but the clean-up from dinner, with which he now customarily assisted Shinobu, passed more or less normally.

* * *

The next morning began without the excitement of the previous day. Though Naru had again awoken to find Keitaro missing, this time he had left a note.

_Naru -_

_I've gone to make breakfast for everyone as my way of apologizing for the chaos I created yesterday. See you when you get down here._

_K._

Naru smiled to herself. However fearsome he could appear at times, he was definitely still the same old softie on the inside.

* * *

Shinobu slowly came out of a deep sleep. She felt very well rested and relaxed until her eyes drifted over to her alarm clock. It read a time almost an hour after she should have been starting breakfast. Eeping quietly to herself she jumped out of bed, and not even bothering to change out of her pajamas she ran downstairs as fast as she could without tripping over herself. She heard Keitaro's laughing before she even got into the kitchen.

"You're too industrious for your own good," he said with a chuckle. "I thought I was going to give you a day off."

"Keitaro-sempai, I'm so sorry! My alarm clock didn't go off! I..."

"I turned it off, Shinobu."

He observed her puzzled expression and gave her a sincere smile. "Like I said, I thought you deserved a day off. Also my apologies for yesterday."

Shinobu smiled weakly back at him. "That's OK sempai."

Keitaro then gave her a look of playful scrutiny. "First off, what's with the 'sempai' thing again? You know you don't have to call me that. In fact, I'd prefer you didn't. I'm just Keitaro and I'm just your friend, not your superior."

Shinobu giggled lightly as she answered. "I'm sorry sem ... I mean, Keitaro. Just an old habit I guess."

"Don't worry about it too much. But anyway, you can go back upstairs for a while if you'd like, or you can keep me company here, but you don't have to help me. I'd like to do this by myself this time."

* * *

The young girl opted to keep Keitaro company. They chitchatted as Keitaro finished up the meal, and before he had the others began to trickle in.

* * *

Keitaro had made a public apology for the show yesterday to everyone once they had all been seated. His words met with polite nods and no one seemed to feel it necessary to beat a dead horse. Haruka still bore an expression that said to Keitaro that though she was consciously trying hard to do so she was still having a hard time fully accepting the new situation, and Suu, though outwardly back to her usual cheerful self, Keitaro sensed that she was still inwardly down about not being able to finish her experimentations. Keitaro shuddered a little at that last thought. But nevertheless breakfast passed without any further talk on the matter, and everyone set about their daily business with good cheer.

* * *

"Motoko?" Keitaro's voice gently roused Motoko out of her light meditation as she sat on the roof preparing for her morning training session. Opening her eyes, she turned to look in the direction of his voice and saw him standing just beyond the stairway. As he started walking towards her she stood up and bowed politely at him.

"I am sorry to have left you in the dark for the past few days. It had been my intention to give you the next day after Naru, but Suu managed to steal it for herself," he said with a friendly huff and smile.

Motoko smiled back. "Don't worry about it, Urashima. You said yourself that you're not going anywhere."

Keitaro tried to feign annoyance but the good humor underneath was quite clear as his words came out amid irrepressible chuckles. "First Shinobu, now you ... why does no one call me by my name around here?"

With a quizzical look on her face Motoko replied, "but ... Urashima is your ..."

"For the love of Pete, just call me Keitaro. There is no need for such formality among friends."

Motoko just smiled, closed her eyes and bowed her head. "Forgive me," she said.

"It's alright. I didn't come here to get into a debate about names and titles. I've actually got some questions for you, and I'm sure you have some for me."

"I certainly do."

"You may go first," said Keitaro with a nod of his head.

* * *

"You worry too much, Naru," said Kitsune cheerfully, throwing her arm around her friend as the two sat on a couch in the living room. Haruka, Seta, Mutsumi, Suu and Sara had gone to the Haruka's tea shop and Motoko and Keitaro were on the roof, so the two old friends were having a little space to themselves. "Everyone is here and everyone is fine. Just accept things as they are for once without running yourself in circles about it."

Naru smiled at the Fox. "You're incredible, you know that? No matter what happens around you, you can convince yourself that it's all just a fairy tale and everyone will live happily ever after. How do you do it?"

Kitsune snickered and winked at Naru. "Sake makes anything possible, my dear."

Naru snorted.

"Seriously though, it's not that I ignore problems or that I'm oblivious to them. But whatever the problem, sulking isn't going to help anything, now is it? Problems will always happen. Ain't nothin' that can be done about that. Getting down in the dumps about it only adds to the problem. You're better off if you can keep your spirits up!"

Naru cocked an eyebrow. "I'm impressed. Who knew that there was a method to your madness?"

Kitsune did her best at a royal curtsey, an effort not made easier by her not wishing to stand up.

Naru had broached the subject of the future with Kitsune, more specifically Keitaro's future. Her feelings for him were strong enough to accept his new situation and love him regardless, but she nevertheless feared that the new ties he had formed, both voluntarily and involuntarily, may yet come back to haunt them. She hadn't expected anything profound from her old friend, but it had nevertheless felt good to talk to someone about it. She had in fact taken something of an uplift from the seemingly eternally carefree attitude of Kitsune. Sometimes that same thing got on her nerves, but it rather soothed them for now.

* * *

"Can you change forms without suppressing your Ki emission?" Had been Motoko's first question for Keitaro.

"Still right-to-the-point, I see," had been Keitaro's reply, accompanied with a nervous smile. "Yes I can."

"Will you?"

Keitaro had paused for a moment and hesitated, remembering all too well how things had gotten out of hand the day before. Granted, he didn't anticipate such actions as those of Suu out of Motoko, but nevertheless he had had second thoughts.

"I understand if you do not wish to do that. I ..."

"No, I will," Keitaro had interrupted, still hesitantly. "But let us take a walk out into the woods first. Having just begged for forgiveness for yesterday I'd rather not cause another scene just one day later."

With that the two of them had slipped away from the apartments.

Once safely out of sight, Keitaro had slowly taken off his shirt. He was by then blushing slightly. "You really don't have to do this if you're uncomfortable with it," Motoko said, noting the shade of red across Keitaro's face.

"No, I'm fine. I'm sorry," he said, referring to his bright red face. "It's one thing to know that you're going to have a lot of explaining to do. I guess it's quite another to actually go through with it. When I first got back I was worried that you would all be, shall we say, put off by the new me. Little did I know that I should have been more worried about being turned into a lab rat by fascinated friends." Keitaro winked sheepishly at Motoko as he said those last words. Gently dropping his shirt to the ground, he said quietly, "are you ready?"

Motoko slowly sat down and took a moment to focus herself. Closing her eyes, she said, "yes." She cleared her mind, opened up her own Ki, and focused it on Keitaro.

Keitaro also had to focus himself, on being unfocused. He had learned to contain his energy so well that it was now a matter of instinct, not something he really had to think about. Rather like someone who had mastered any skill to the point of automation, he actually had to do it 'wrong' on purpose. Focusing only the energy he needed to change, and consciously letting the rest freely flow out of him. And flow freely it did. He again felt the incredible surge of energy envelope his body, something that was exhilarating and empowering, feeling as though his whole being was for a few moments nothing but a bright glowing ball of energy. Though the transformation was still kind of jerky to an outside observer, it felt much smoother to Keitaro than it had his first few times, more like a smooth transition than an explosion.

Motoko could feel the Ki waves coming off of Keitaro the moment he took the notion to change forms. Right off the bat she picked up on a major difference between this time and the last time she'd felt the Ki of Keitaro's new abilities - whereas at first his energy had been a chaotic swirl of powerful but totally undirected and incoherent power, the waves she felt off of him this time actually felt somewhat less powerful, and certainly much more orderly and linear. Keeping her eyes closed so as not to be distracted by his physical transformation, she probed deeper into him with her own Ki waves.

Keitaro could sense Motoko's probe. He wasn't sure how much he should show her, because he did not know how Lycan energies would affect a human, even a strong human such as her. He decided that Motoko would be able to protect herself or withdraw from this little energy-sharing session before anything too terribly bad could happen. He made no effort to contain or restrict any of his power.

Motoko became aware of a splitting headache developing as she continued to soak up Keitaro's Ki. Not allowing it to distract her, she continued to read his energy. Suddenly, images began to flash inside her mind. She saw flashes of other Lycans, many, many Lycans all together in one place. Though uncoordinated and seemingly random except for the Lycan theme, she nevertheless saw these flashes as though through her own eyes. Without really knowing how or why, she somehow knew then that she was Keitaro. Or rather, she was seeing these things through his eyes. Then, along with a feeling of backtracking, she saw a horse. The animal was terrified and baying accordingly, but nevertheless she advanced on it. To her shock, her dark, powerful right arm lashed out at the creature, pinning the creature to the ground with one hand with incredible strength. Before she'd had much time to absorb this, her equally powerful jaws clamped down on the horse's neck and tore out a large piece of it. The animal's struggles ceased. Ravenously she fed on the creature, until moments later she heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Suddenly angered, she climbed up onto the rafters in the stable she found herself in and waited. A man walked it. Staring in disbelief at what he saw, he suddenly beamed his flashlight on her. In a momentary loss of control, she angrily flung herself at the man, the same powerful clawed hand raking itself across his chest ...

Motoko snapped out of her meditation with a start. With the recollection of what she had just seen fresh in her mind, she received a second sharp start in as many seconds when she saw the Lycan in front of her. Keitaro quickly shifted back to his human form.

"What happened?" He asked.

Motoko sat silent for a moment, shook it off, and replied, "I don't know. I saw ... myself ... killing a horse ... and then ..."

Keitaro raised an eyebrow, though with a very somber look. "I see ..."

"What was ...?"

Keitaro looked away. "You saw a memory. My memory. The night of my first transformation. As I explained earlier, for Lycans, our memories can manifest themselves in our Ki. That's how our memories transfer when someone is bitten."

A saddened look crossed Motoko's face. "Did you kill that man?" She asked quietly.

Still looking away, Keitaro shook his head slightly. "No, I didn't. At least, I don't think so. But ..."

Motoko nodded for him to continue, and small buds of tears became visible in Keitaro's eyes. "... but ... I _wanted_ to. I _really _wanted to. That was a terrible night for me. I was barely in control. I felt as though I was running on pure instinct and primal rage and no reason whatsoever. The hunger ... " Wiping the tears out of his eyes, he continued. "Now that I've learned to control my powers and have refined the way in which they interact with my normal life, it terrifies me to remember that one night in which it was all I could do not to slaughter any human unlucky enough to cross my path."

Motoko felt a great deal of sympathy for Keitaro at that moment. She was reminded of just how difficult a situation this must have been for Keitaro. She knew that it would have been difficult for her.

"Anyway," continued Keitaro, shaking off the bad memory, "did you get anything useful out of this?"

Motoko nodded. "I thank you for doing that for me. I got a good look at your Ki waves, but I've got nothing to compare it to. With your permission, I'd like to take this information to my sister's school and see if I can find anything in our archives that might tell me more. Of course I won't mention any names or tell them anything they don't need to know."

Keitaro hesitated for a moment, then said, "On one further condition."

"What's that?"

"You had said earlier that you thought you remember something from your old lessons about your clan being allied with vampires?"

Motoko nodded slightly.

"Find out what you can about that for me and we'll call it a trade."

"Is that what you wanted to ask me about?"

"Yes."

"Sharing that sort of information outside my clan is strictly forbidden. But if you trust me with your secrets, then I suppose it's only fair for me to give you the same courtesy."

"Thank you."

"You too."

A short moment of silence followed before Keitaro spoke again. "What else would you like to know?"

Motoko thought for a moment. She quickly remembered what it was that had troubled her so much before. "It really ruffled my feathers that I was unable to sense anything yesterday when you and Suu were ... doing your thing. Or even more to the point, that all these things - werewolves and vampires and whatnot - have existed without me having the slightest clue to their existence. It's really made me question my own abilities. Can you ... teach me more about your kind and your powers? Your history, all that sort of thing? ... train me ... to be sensitive to your energies even when you conceal them?"

Keitaro was silent for a moment, then laughed out loud. "For some reason, it never occurred to me that you might ask me that. Teaching you Lycan history, that will be easy, though I must warn you that they only taught me the history as it is relevant to the present, so your lesson will be incomplete. As for training you to read Lycan energies, I suppose I can. Or rather, I don't know a whole lot about the relationship between the Ki of a powerful human such as yourself and that of a Lycan, that's not considered too terribly important by my kind. But we can try. Though I'm sure it goes without saying that I'll be violating some rules myself in doing so. Now that you mention it though, I suppose it could benefit us both if we learn more about how being a Lycan makes my energies different than yours ... and how they're still alike."

Motoko smiled. "When would be a good time for you?"

Keitaro smiled back. "Today is your day. No time like the present."

* * *

Naru lay awake in her bed. Looking at the clock, it was almost 11 o'clock. It had not taken too long for Keitaro and Motoko's absence to be noticed. Everyone had figured that that Keitaro taking his day with Motoko, as he had said he wanted to do with everyone, but they had not expected for them to be gone this long. Naru heaved a sigh and smiled. _"I don't suppose I can have him entirely to myself," _she thought. _"I'm just pleased that we're all together again and everyone's happy."_

Not long after her thoughts wound up that she heard footsteps quietly coming up the stairs. She could just barely make out the voices of Keitaro and Motoko bid one another a good night, and then one set of footsteps went in the opposite direction while the other came up to her door. Turning to face her door, she saw Keitaro slip quietly inside. Seeing that she was awake, he said "sorry I'm so late. You could say we got on a roll and lost track of time."

"What were you doing?"

Keitaro chuckled quietly. "Do you really have to ask? Motoko made me dictate to her every bit of knowledge that I possess about Lycans and vampires and Ki, then she wanted me to give her a lesson on Lycan tracking. Even I got rather engrossed in things."

"I see," said Naru with a yawn. "Well, are you coming to bed or what?"

"I think I will."


	18. A Night With Mutsumi

Naru was happy to see Keitaro still asleep at her side when she awoke. She had already started to wonder if his not being there in the morning was going to become a habit. She smiled at him and then slowly rose out of bed, taking care not to disturb him. As she casually began to change out of her pajamas she heard a quiet knock on her door. 

"_Keitaro? Are you awake?" _Came a soft whisper. It was Motoko's voice. Naru gently slid open the door. Seeing Keitaro still sleeping, Motoko bowed her head lightly to Naru. "I'm sorry to disturb you," Motoko said. "Will you give Keitaro a message for me when he wakes up?"

"Um .. sure. Are you going somewhere?" Asked Naru.

"Yes I am. Please tell Keitaro that I've gone to visit my sister and that I'll be in touch shortly."

Naru cocked an eyebrow. "You're not going to tell Tsuruko about all this, are you?"

"No, I'm not. But I think she can help Keitaro and I answer some mutual questions. I'll just be careful about how I ask them."

"But isn't your sister the master of a school specializing in hunting 'demons?' And didn't you say that it was possible that she might have some sort of pact with vampires? Are you sure it's a good idea to even take the chance of drawing her suspicions?"

" 'Demons' are just like humans - there are good ones and bad ones. My clan knows this. Even if Tsuruko did find out about Keitaro she's not going to hunt him down just because he is what he is. Keitaro still has a good heart and any student of Tsuruko's school would be able to recognize that. Besides, after what Keitaro showed me yesterday ..." she paused a moment for emphasis, her eyebrows raising as they do when one is genuinely impressed. " ... I really don't think he has anything to fear from an ordinary human, or even such a powerful human as my sister."

Naru seemed to digest that and slowly nodded in consent.

"But anyway, I did have the same thought myself regardless, and I told Keitaro that. But there is information that he wants too, and he said that it was worth the risk. I promise you Naru-sempai that I will take every precaution that I can to ensure that there will be no need to put any of that to the test. I don't want to make trouble for Keitaro any more than you do. Do you trust me when I say that?"

Motoko's words made Naru suddenly became aware of how protective she was coming across. Lowering her eyes and making an effort at a chuckle, she said, "yes, of course I do. Please forgive me. I just ... I have a bad feeling about all this nagging in the back of my mind. I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to Keitaro. I love him so much."

Motoko smiled. Naru seemed to sense the warmth that Motoko beamed at her, and raised her eyes again. "I know you do," she said simply. "We all love Keitaro. And we all love you too. No one wishes anything but the best for the two of you."

A light blush appeared on Naru's face and she smiled back at Motoko. "Thank you Motoko. That means a lot to me."

The young swordswoman winked at her friend as she picked up her bag and slowly backed away from the door. "See you soon, Naru. I shouldn't be gone for more than a few days ... maybe a week tops. Take care."

"You too."

With that, Motoko bowed again in Naru's direction and left.

* * *

Keitaro woke up shortly after Naru and Motoko had concluded their conversation. "Looks like a nice day out there," he said when he opened her blinds. Another smile crossed Naru's face.

"It sure does," she said, walking up behind him and then wrapped him in a hug. "So who's the lucky one who gets your attention _today?_" She asked. She deliberately tried to sound jealous. Or at least, _mostly_ deliberately. A little of it was just sort of there anyway.

Keitaro didn't miss her tone, and he didn't seem to miss the trace of sincerity in it either. "I was thinking Mutsumi. I've seen the least of her of anyone. She's also the hardest of you all to read. It's reasonably clear to me where the rest of you stand with things. I'd like to know where she's at. After all, she wasn't here for the worst of things, so she's sort of just been dragged along by the nose."

"Oh, I see ... looking for another late night with the ladies are ya? All you had to do ask you know. No nee ..."

Keitaro gently but firmly grabbed her shoulders, spun her around and planted a soft kiss on her lips, quickly extinguishing her protests. That seemed to quench Naru's notions of jealousy, both the pretend and the genuine. Their embrace lasted the better part of a minute before Keitaro slowly backed away. Naru seemed satisfied.

"Alright alright," she said, smiling meekly. "Just don't be out all night again, eh?"

"I'll try not to," he replied, returning her meek smile.

"Anyway, Motoko came in this morning and wanted me to tell you that she's gone to visit her sister and that she'd be in touch shortly."

Keitaro nodded. "Good. Thanks for passing that on."

"Anything I should know about?"

"Nothing too profound. Or so I suspect. She wanted to search the archives of her school for more information based on what I told her last night, and I wanted her to look into what she mentioned a couple days ago, something about her family possibly being aligned with vampires."

"What if they are?"

"I highly doubt that they are. I know that Lycans generally do not have too much to do with human organizations on any kind of regular basis, and we certainly don't go around announcing what we are. I can't speak for the vampire nation but I would have to assume that they are equally uninterested in revealing themselves to human organizations. But even if they really are, that might not mean anything. I was never told anything about any human families or groups that were held to be any kind of significant threat. And also as I said earlier, vampires and Lycans here in Japan coexist without conflict. The only reason that I wanted her to look into that is to find out if foreign vampires might be able to wield any influence there, or maybe just to see if they know anything about it, regardless of whose side they may take."

"You mean the ones who started this whole mess?"

"Yes."

"But wasn't that almost a year ago now? Isn't that done and over with?"

"We have reason to believe that they will be back, if they aren't already here and preparing. Those vampires from last year were only a scouting party. When the didn't return to where ever they came from, we believe that whomever sent them is preparing to return in force, now that they know there is resistance here. Any piece of information could prove invaluable."

"Are you sure about this?"

"No, we're not. But we're pretty sure, and in any case we'd rather prepare for nothing than get caught unready for something."

"Does that mean that you will be leaving soon too?"

Keitaro got a somewhat somber look on his face. "It's possible. If and when the balloon really goes up, then yes, I will be leaving. We have no information to indicate a possible date. It could be tomorrow, it could be 5 years from now or it could be never. Time will tell."

After breakfast, Keitaro again helped with the clean up, and then went up to Mutsumi's room and knocked softly on the door. "Mutsumi?"

"Come in," came Mutsumi's soft and pleasant voice.

Keitaro opened the door and walked inside, and closed the door behind him. Mutsumi was sitting by her small desk, pulling together some papers. She turned her head to face him as he walked towards her, and he sat on his knees on the floor next to her.

"I want to apologize for not giving you any personal attention until now. As I'm sure you've followed it's been a hectic couple of days since I got back."

Mutsumi just looked at him and smiled. "That's alright Keitaro. I understand."

"Anyway, it's good to see you again, and I was hoping that you and I could spend the day together. Do you already have plans?"

"I do have to be up at the university shortly and I'll be up there until mid-afternoon, but I'm free after that."

"How does the old dinner-and-a-movie routine sound?"

"That sounds wonderful Kei-kun. I'll be looking forward to it."

Keitaro felt a warming of his face at her words, though it stopped short of a blush. It had been a long time since anyone had called him that. Then again, Mutsumi was really the only one who ever did. Keitaro smiled to himself.

Mutsumi was never one to let a moment of awkward silence stand, even if she herself was unaware that the silence was awkward for anyone else or that she had interrupted it. Standing up, she gathered her papers, put them all into a folder which she put into a small bag, and gave Keitaro a light kiss on the forehead. "See you tonight," she said softly, and quietly walked out of the room.

This time Keitaro did blush visibly, had anyone else been there to see it. Thoughts of the past flew through his mind and he could not help but laugh out loud. _"I'm glad Naru wasn't here to see that,"_ he thought to himself with a hearty chuckle. _"She's probably wearing a silver ring nowadays, just in case ..."_

_

* * *

_

The rest of the morning passed uneventfully. Keitaro left to meet Mutsumi at the university just after 1pm, after having spent the few hours of kill-time with Naru.

* * *

Keitaro was convinced that he would be early to meet with Mutsumi, until he saw her already sitting on a bench waiting for him outside the building. She saw him before he had seen her, and it was her waving that had caught his attention. He had worn the nicest clothes he could find out of his wardrobe because he had noticed the she herself had been rather dressed up before she had left. Smiling meekly as he came up to her, he said, "I hope you haven't been waiting long. I though I was getting here early."

Mutsumi stood up and took his arm with her own. "I left the seminar a little early."

Keitaro scoffed lightly. "Oh geez Mutsumi, you didn't have to do that. It wouldn't have killed me to wait a little."

She just smiled at him. "It's not a big deal Kei-kun. Anyway, what did you want to do again?"

"Well, I had suggested dinner and a movie, but we can do whatever you'd like. I just wanted to spend some time with you and catch up with you a bit. Exactly how we go about that is entirely up to you."

"Your idea sounds just fine to me."

* * *

Mutsumi chose the movie, it was a rather sappy chick-flick romance film. Keitaro didn't really mind though. Mutsumi sure enjoyed it. That made him happy. After the movie, Keitaro suggested a very nice, high-class restaurant that he knew of that was close by. Mutsumi talked up and down about the movie's star relationship and spoke passionately, by Mutsumi standards at least, about the romantic details as they walked. Keitaro found himself cocking an eyebrow more than once as they spoke. He had long known that there was a repressed romantic beneath Mutsumi's somewhat emotionless exterior, but either he hadn't thought about it in a long time or her romantic side was much less repressed now. Either way, Keitaro was beginning to develop a feeling almost akin to discomfort - the two of them had had some rather romantic moments of their own in the past, albeit with relatively innocent intent on his part, and although he still loved Mutsumi dearly as a friend, he was hoping that he wasn't giving her the wrong idea by taking her out. Fortunately for him, just as he was thinking about saying something, Mutsumi herself put the issue to rest for him.

"... and speaking of which, my sincerest congratulations to you and Naru for your own progression," she said, as she had come to talk about the scene in the movie where the couple with the problematic relationship finally managed to get it together.

Keitaro heaved a silent sigh of relief. "I guess the rest of the girls told you that Naru and I have gotten things together ourselves?"

"Actually, Naru told me," replied Mutsumi. "She told me all about the two of you. She and I occasionally ended up staying awake all night, just talking about you."

Keitaro chuckled. "Is that so? And what exactly was she saying about me?"

"She mentioned that it doesn't always take a full moon to bring out the beast in you, sometimes all you need is a little kiss. I'm so jealous," she replied with a friendly nuzzle to his shoulder.

* * *

They eventually made it to the restaurant, and they were given a nice table near a window. Their conversation switched to food as they flipped through the menu. A waiter was with them within a few minutes and both Keitaro and Mutsumi had already spotted their favorite entrees, and placed their order. In the brief moment of silence after the waiter left the table, Keitaro decided to get the business end of things out of the way first.

"Well ... other than scripting out our night lives out for you, did Naru tell you about the other things that took place in your absence?"

"You mean the story of you, Kitsune and Naru being attacked, Kitsune being shot and you being bitten by a werewolf? That story? Yes, she told me." Mutsumi spoke in her usual voice that had casual written all over it. Somehow Keitaro was reminded of Kitsune, catching up to him and Naru late one night as they walked, talking about monsters and mayhem like it was nothing but something to laugh at.

Keitaro almost did a visible double take. He hadn't anticipated Mutsumi being especially ruffled, he had never seen anything ruffle her in his life, but her bluntness surprised him nonetheless. "Umm ... did you believe her? Do you believe me?"

Mutsumi looked away as though she was trying to recall her old thoughts. "I guess I didn't think too much about it when Naru first told me. They just said that you'd be coming home soon and I guess that's all I really thought about."

"What about now?"

"Everyone seemed pretty serious when they talked about it. No one laughed when you were talking about it the day you got back. If you tell me that it's true, then I'll believe you."

"It's true."

Mutsumi didn't say anything, not even an 'ara ara.' The silence was very awkward.

"Yen for your thoughts," Keitaro said.

"My thoughts?"

Keitaro opened his arms in the gesture that invites another person to speak. "Uh ... well, is this going to be a problem for you? Comments, questions, concerns? Anything?"

Mutsumi smiled sweetly. "Whatever you may do on a full moon, right now you seem like the same Keitaro I've always liked to me. You're home, you're doing well and so is everyone else. I don't see why anything else matters."

Keitaro seemed momentarily caught off guard. The more he thought about it the more he realized that he really didn't have a preconceived notion of Mutsumi's thoughts on the matter before talking to her, and he was certainly aware of her ... unique attitude towards various things, but he still couldn't help but find it odd that she was apparently taking all this in stride. Then again, she hadn't actually seen anything for herself. Had she been present when they were first attacked, or when Keitaro first changed, or when the other Lycans had come for him, perhaps her demeanor towards the subject would be different. _"I guess there's no point in fishing for problems if there are none readily found," _he thought to himself. _"Might as well leave well enough alone for now." _ "Well anyhow, how have you been? Obviously you're still involved at Tokyo U," he said out loud.

"I've been well. It was nice to visit my family again, but it's good to be back at Hinata too. I stayed enrolled in some correspondence courses while I was away, but the seminar I went to today was more just for fun. It was a ecological seminar about biodiversity."

Keitaro could not help but smile. _"Biodiversity huh? If you were anyone else I'd think that was a jab," _he thought to himself. "I see. That does sound interesting. I have to admit that I haven't given school much thought of late. Kind of ironic how years of hard work can so easily be rendered redundant by circumstances, isn't it?"

"Are you still going to attend Tokyo U?"

Keitaro shook his head. "I don't know. I dare say that my career plans have been chosen for me, so whether or not I'll have enough time to make it worthwhile to go there remains to be seen. Even if I do ... I'm not sure. Like I said, I haven't thought about it in a while."

Mutsumi seemed just barely visibly downed by his words. "That's too bad. It would have been fun if you, me and Naru could all still go there together, just like we had talked about before."

Keitaro nodded. "Yes it would be."

* * *

They finished a very leisurely dinner in about an hour, then they had gone for a walk, stopping at the occasional shop when something caught either of their eyes. Much to Keitaro's relief, Mutsumi had further emphasized that she understood that he and Naru had worked out their problems to become an official couple. She was still affectionate with him, but she stayed within the realm of friendship. Keitaro was also very happy to hear more about her further bonding with Naru while he had been away. The three of them had always enjoyed a special three-way bond as well as common goals, so the fact that this bond was still as solid as ever and without the tensions of the past was a great relief indeed. Not too long after dark they had arrived back home, and Mutsumi, being very visibly tired by then, had thanked Keitaro for the lovely evening and retired to her room. Most of the lights were off and Keitaro's keen hearing could only hear two voices, speaking quietly over the soft sound of easy-listening music, coming from the kitchen. One of the voices was Kitsune, and the other, a male voice, sounded familiar, very familiar, but Keitaro could not quite place it. Walking over to the source of the sound, he saw Kitsune sitting at the table with a man. They were sharing a bottle of Kitsune's sake by candlelight, and there was a small portable stereo sitting on the table next to them, the source of the soft music. Keitaro's memory fired about for a moment, and then recognition hit him.

"Hi there Keitaro. You're welcome to join us, you know. No need to lurk in hallways," said Kitsune, seeing him and breaking him out of his thoughts before he could speak. "You remember Dr. Hasagawa, don'tchya?"

Keitaro smiled and walked over to the table, offering his hand to Hasagawa. "Of course I do. Good to see you again, Dr. Hasagawa."

Hasagawa stood up and accepted Keitaro's handshake. "You can call me Koan, Keitaro. Good to see you again too. You're looking fit as a fiddle these days. How was your trip?"

"What trip?"

Koan looked puzzled. "Your trip to China? Kitsune here tells me that you spent the better part of this past year there as an assistant to an archeological team."

Keitaro might have looked puzzled himself, but as he pulled up a chair and sat down with them he caught the look on Kitsune's face, as well as her 'just play along' wink.

"Oh yeah, sorry," Keitaro said. "I can't really think of it as a vacation because we were so busy all the time. Much more work than play, I guess your choice of words threw me off a little."

Koan nodded. "Believe me, I understand all about busy. This is the first night I've managed to get off in over a week."

"Would you like a glass of sake, Keitaro?" Asked Kitsune, offering him the bottle.

"Sure, thank you." He stood up and went into the kitchen to grab himself a wine glass. Sitting back down, Kitsune filled his glass.

* * *

Koan left just after midnight. As Kitsune closed the door behind him after seeing him off, Keitaro spoke.

"Koan really is a nice guy. Am I too take it the two of you are really an item these days?"

Kitsune smiled cheerfully. "Yeah, I guess you could say that. The poor guy really doesn't have a lot of spare time, but he calls me when he can."

Keitaro patted her on the back. "I'm happy for ya, Kits. Seems like he really does you right."

Kitsune put her arm around his shoulders and pulled his head next to hers. Smiling seductively and with a wink, she said, "oh baby, does he _ever_ ..."

Keitaro chuckled and playfully chided himself for being so careless with his choice of words in her presence. "ANYWAY, I'm still moving down my list in spending some quality time with the each of you individually, and tomorrow's not yet been claimed by anyone. Are you free tomorrow?" He asked.

"Yeah, I'm free. I've been anxiously awaiting my turn with you, I wouldn't miss it," she added with another wink.

"Sounds like a plan then. See you tomorrow."

"Nightynite, Keitaro."

* * *

Keitaro went to Naru's room first, but she wasn't in there. She had been waiting for him in his room instead, but she was sound asleep by the time Keitaro got there. Keitaro smiled as he looked at her lithe form sprawled out across his floor. _"My gosh, she's even more beautiful when she sleeps," _he thought to himself. He got out his bedroll and covered her up along with himself, taking care not to disturb her. _"Sorry I'm late dear,"_ was his last thought before he drifted off to sleep. 


	19. The Fox and the Wolf

**Author's Notes:**

**First off, and shame on me for not mentioning this in my notes at the beginning of chapter 18 - a thousand thanks to **_bluetinkerbell _**for giving Dr. Hasagawa his first name!**

**

* * *

**

"Rise and shine, sleepyface! You know what they say, early to bed, early to rise!"

Naru's voice rattled Keitaro out of his sleep. Blinking furiously for a moment as he strove to regain full consciousness, he glanced at the clock. _"5am? Shinobu isn't even awake yet. Wha ..."_

Naru seemed to read Keitaro's thoughts through his expressions, and she decided to interrupt them. With a self-satisfied smile that spoke of _(mostly) _playful vindictiveness, she put her hands on her cheeks and mocked an expression of surprise. "Oh my, that's right! You weren't early to bed, were you? So sorry, my mistake ..."

Keitaro sighed loudly and flopped himself back down on his bed. "Aww come on Naru, cut me some slack will ya? What did you expect me to do, say, 'gee Mutsumi, I know we're having fun and all, but the wife expects me home any minute and I'd better be there to tuck the kids in?'"

Naru seemed as though she was indeed trying for the jealous housewife look, but the comical look of mild exasperation on Keitaro's face tickled her funny bone a little too much. She broke down into a poorly suppressed giggle. "I'm sorry Keitaro. I just couldn't resist. After all, you _did _say that you wouldn't be out too late ..." she added at the end with a slight reversion to her playful vindictive tone.

"No I didn't. What I said was, 'I'll _try_ not to be out too late.'" Keitaro stayed silent for a moment, then continued. "What on earth are you doing up at this hour yourself, anyway?"

"Nothing in particular. I just happened to wake up and a wicked little idea popped into my head."

Keitaro sighed again, but smiled sleepily and turned his head slightly in Naru's direction. "Can we go back to sleep now?"

"You can if you want. I actually went to bed pretty early last night so I think I'm up for good. I was going to take a page out of your playbook and sneak into Shinobu's room, turn off her alarm clock and make breakfast myself."

"Fabulous. Wake me up for lunch then, will you?" Said Keitaro as he pretended to close his eyes, but in fact he deliberately kept one eye open enough to catch Naru's expected glare and smile.

"Or how about I just serve you breakfast in bed, Naru style ..."

* * *

Keitaro did of course turn up for breakfast along with everyone else. Kitsune made a small show of the fact that it was her turn for Keitaro's attention, although she refused to say anything about what it was she had in mind for the day's activities, insisting that she didn't want to spoil the surprise for him. She failed to noticed the small wave of snickers that passed down the table when she said that - while it was true that her relationship with Koan had dramatically reduced her drinking habit, what that really meant was that she seldom if ever drank while she was alone anymore, and that she never had more than a social drink or two when she was with Koan. When she was going out with anyone else, however, most especially if she could figure out a way to label the occasion a "special occasion ..." well, she still loved nothing more than to pound booze like an old pro at least once in a while. If anyone _(including Keitaro himself)_ had a notion that Kitsune's plans were anything other than giving Keitaro the Grand Hinata Bar & Grill Tour, they mentally slapped themselves for having even thought of something so absurd.

* * *

"Would you mind terribly if we stopped by Koan's place first? I was supposed to lend him a few of my books last night but we forgot about it and I told him I'd drop them off today?" Asked Kitsune as the climbed into the back of taxi.

"Not at all. In fact it's A-OK with me if he wants to come along with us."

"I'm sure he'd love to, but he has to work today. If we go straight there though we should catch him before he leaves."

Keitaro nodded. The driver looked back at him and said, "So where's the first stop, Mr. Urashima?"

Kitsune cocked an eyebrow and gave Keitaro a look of disappointment. "Huh? First stop? You made plans already? But I had ..."

"Don't worry Kitsune," interrupted Keitaro with a reassuring pat on her back. "I took the liberty of chartering this cab for the day becauseI figured by the time we're halfway done with _your_ plans, we're going to need it."

It took a moment for Keitaro's foresight to sink in with her, she just smiled widely and laughed. "Good thinking Keitaro, good thinking!"

Kitsune and Keitaro didn't stay at Koan's place for very long. As it turned out they caught him just minutes before he had to leave, so he bid them a fun time and was on his way. Kitsune got right on with her plans.

* * *

"How are you paying for all this? I know you're not making a killing off of your earnings from the Hinata Apartments!" Kitsune asked Keitaro over their first round of drinks at the first bar they visited. In addition to providing for their transportation, Keitaro had insisted on picking up the bar tab. It might have been the first time in her life that Kitsune had ever had a second thought on the matter when such an offer had been made to her.

"Let's just say that memories and abilities weren't the only things I inherited from Mr. Katsumoto," he replied simply.

"Huh? Won't your .. um ... comrades ... be upset with you for spending their money on taking the likes of me out drinking and partying?"

Keitaro shook his head slightly and smiled. "It's not their money. It was Katsumoto's money, and now it's mine. That's all I would ever tap into for personal use. If I used collective funds for personal things, then yes, they would definitely frown upon that. For tonight, I assure you that you needn't worry about a thing!"

"Fair enough. Bottom's up!" She knocked back her shot. Keitaro followed suit.

* * *

They only stayed at the first bar for about an hour, but that was more than enough time for them to have cleared about half a bottle of hard liquor between them.

Their next stop was an arcade. Kitsune was a little buzzed and was thoroughly enjoying herself. Keitaro was certainly having fun too but showed no obvious effect of the alcohol he'd just consumed. They spent a good 2 hours there before moving on.

From there they went to another bar. They both snacked a little at the arcade, so with some more food in their stomachs they were more than ready for another round. They passed up on the hard stuff this time, this time opening up with a large, frosty mug of draft beer. This bar was a much more happening place than the first one had been - there was some live music, a small dance floor, and more people.

* * *

"Heh heh. I have to say Kits old pal, you do know how to have a good time," said Keitaro, taking a swig of his now half-empty beer as he watched Kitsune chug the rest of hers in one take.

"Oh, don't be thankin' me yet ma friend. This day's fun has but only begun!" She replied with high cheer.

They small-talked for a few more minutes before the waitress noticed Kitsune's empty mug. "Another round for you two?"

"Yes please," Kitsune and Keitaro said together. Moments later two fresh mugs were delivered to their table. Grabbing hers, she raised it to Keitaro. "Cheers," she said with a wink.

"Cheers," he replied with a widening smile. The two of them both chugged this time, Kitsune finishing about 3/4 of hers and Keitaro about half of his before either stopped for a breath. "Ahhh ...," he said as he put down his mug. "I'm not huge drinker or anything, but I have to admit, this is quite ... invigorating ... once in a while. "

The Fox raised an eyebrow. "Invigorating, huh ..." she trailed off. She was silent for just a moment before her body began to shake with suppressed laughter. This did not go unnoticed by Keitaro.

"Huh? What's so funny?"

Kitsune took a moment to collect herself. "You call a few drinks and some video games 'invigorating?'" She said in between some chuckles. "Oh man, Keitaro ... for all the things your new friends out in the woods might have taught you, you sure seem as though you could use a lesson or two on what getting 'invigorated' is all about ..." Looking around, she caught sight of the waitress who had served them before. She waved her hand at her to flag her down. When the waitress came to their table, Kitsune said, "would you please go ahead and bring us two more rounds?"

"Two more? Right now?" Asked Keitaro with a raised eyebrow.

Kitsune just smiled widely at him. "Trust me."

* * *

They finished all three rounds. In just under another hour. And Keitaro took an extra few shots of hard stuff after all. Now Kitsune had a pretty high alcohol tolerance and she had been eating, but by the time she had put down four of those large mugs of stout draft she was most definitely feeling it. Keitaro had been something of a midweight in the past, but it appeared that the resiliency benefits of his lycanthropy covered chemical damages as well. Nevertheless, he didn't seem totally immune - he began to feel the slightest twinges of alcoholic buzz himself as they left that bar.

From there Kitsune had directed him to a club that she had gone to frequently in her pre-Koan days. In the past she had gone there as much to ogle the guys as to drink and dance - hence her lack of attendance once she and Koan had become an item - but when she thought about it, it could be quite a fun place to hang out even without window-shopping for male eye candy. Good music, roomy and energized dance area ... '_yes_, she had decided, _that's definitely the place where we should go now ... I'm buzzin' and it's time for some release ...'_

_

* * *

_

Before they made it to the dance floor, Keitaro surprised Kitsune by him being the one to suggest that they grab a few more drinks before they hit the floors. Kitsune of course obliged, but whereas she only took one wine cooler, Keitaro grabbed a bottle of beer in each hand. Kitsune looked at him with raised eyebrows and a smirk.

"What?" He asked, with an air of innocence.

"Nothing. Nothing at all," she replied with a giggle. "Shall we?" She motioned away from the bar and towards the dance room.

Keitaro popped the cap to one of his beers and downed the better part of it in one swig. "Yes, lets!" He said with enthusiasm.

* * *

Kitsune was laughing. She laughed because she was having so much fun, but even more so she was finding Keitaro's antics hysterical. He had finished both of his beers as well as a few extra shots of hard liquor and was making a very energetic and enthusiastic attempt at dancing, but no amount of supernatural strength, endurance or grace could equate to artistic talent or musical coordination. If the alcohol hadn't loosened him up a bit, she doubted that he'd have had the humility to do what he was doing in private, let alone in public. But in any case, Keitaro was obviously having a good time. Indeed, he was becoming something of a star on the dance floor, with many of the other dancers halting their own activities to watch him. However ridiculous his dancing might otherwise have been, the sheer energy with which he set about it seemed to fascinate on its own. Not that Kitsune's efforts were dramatically better - she was feeling the effects of the alcohol a lot more than Keitaro was, but perhaps more to the point she was laughing too hard to keep her head up.

"Where did you find this guy?" A couple standing behind Kitsune said in between laughs of their own as they watched the two tear up the dance floor.

"Find him? I live with him!" The Fox answered with a wink and a grin.

"What a fun guy. Must be a party a day at your place!" Said the female of the couple.

Kitsune let out another good bout of laughs. "Oh man, you haven't the _faintest _..."

* * *

The dancing, or that which passed for dancing, continued for hours. Neither Kitsune nor Keitaro kept track of time. The two of them also became the single greatest attraction of the club for the time being. Eager for their entertainment to continue, several of the clubbers did their best to join in with Keitaro and Kitsune as they danced, and the two of them found themselves being offered as many free drinks as they could handle. Kitsune took advantage of the situation, but not to the same degree as Keitaro - she stopped well short of being royally plastered. Keitaro's alcohol capacity, on the other hand, was becoming more of an item with the clubbers than his lack of humility. No one was keeping track of how much he drank, but the general consensus was that he should have been flat on his face on the ground by the time he wandered away from the dance floor, not blushing brightly, singing and quasi-dancing his way over to the bar area, their small group of new club buddies following them. Keitaro seemed to be reveling in the attention. Kitsune was sober enough to have an appreciation for the situation - as they sat down and ordered some food, Keitaro put down another few shots of something strong enough for Kitsune to smell as he drank them, even over the alcohol on her own breath. Just over the course of the day _so far _she had watched him put down more booze than she would have ever taken in one and a half days even at the peak of her alcoholic phase. Nevertheless, while Keitaro was most definitely drunk at this point, he was still more or less coherent.

"_I hope Keitaro can regenerate his liver as well as he can his leg," _Kitsune found herself thinking as Keitaro took several more large mugs of beer with his meal. Kitsune ate as well but she decided to call it a day for alcohol. Besides, she had a feeling that things were going to get _really _interesting with Keitaro in the near future, and she didn't want to be passed out on the floor for whatever may come of that!

* * *

By the time the sun went down they were still at the club. Kitsune, as well as everyone else who had been there from the beginning, was now in absolute awe. Keitaro had consumed enough alcohol to kill 3 or 4 large adults where they sat, but he was most definitely alive and kicking. Literally. Alive though he was, he was now about as hammered as Kitsune had ever been, plus an extra point or two. Several times he'd tried to get up and dance again, but he was unable to even stand steady, much less dance, and so all such attempts ended in failure. He tried to keep singing too, but his capacity to hold a tone, modest at the best of times, was completely gone, and he almost seemed to embarrass himself into stopping shortly after every time he started up again. Most of the original crowd he and Kitsune had collected during their time at the club had gone home, but a few had remained behind, and a whole new and larger night crowd had begun to filter it.

"Holy crap dude, are you alright?" Said one of the clubbers as Keitaro had tried to say something but had broken down into uneven chuckles.

Keitaro looked up at him and smiled. "EeeI'm jus fine," he managed, then laughed again.

"Oh man dude, your eyes are all red. You really might wanna call it a night," said one clubber.

His words seemed to plant an idea in Keitaro's head. Somehow, by the look he got on his face, Kitsune suddenly became a little nervous.

"My eyez rr a bit red, eh? Well why didnchya say so? I kin fix that right up .." Keitaro said. Holding up a finger, he sank under the table for a moment. He came back up with his eyes closed. He took a deep breath before opening them. When he did, his eyes now shone gray.

"Woah man!" "Killer contacts!" "How'd you do that?" Came the voices of the clubbers.

"_Uh-oh ..."_ was Kitsune's only thought.

Keitaro didn't stop there. He was suddenly energized again by this newfound line of entertainment. "Ah ha ha! You guyz like tha? Check this out. I'm a bag uv tricks!" He turned his head away from everyone else, but Kitsune could still see his face. He pulled up his shirt and covered his face with it, then put his arms over his face like a magician hiding a rabbit with a cloth. Kitsune watched Keitaro's face contort into some sort of deranged smile as his teeth sprouted into razor-sharp fangs and grew to about the maximum length possible without Keitaro changing the shape of his entire jaw.

"_Shit! Not good ... time for us to be going! Um ... sorry Naru, necessity calls!" _With those thoughts Kitsune put on a seductive face, reached over the table, grabbed Keitaro's shirt, pulled their heads together and covered his lips with her own, making a good show of the kiss. Feeling the elongated teeth in his mouth, she cringed visibly as another thought entered her mind. _"Oh man, I hope those teeth don't cut me ... wouldn't that one be a bitch to explain to Naru, why I came home with him with gray eyes and a bitten tongue!"_

"Ha ha, nice trick there buddy, waddya call it, 'The Chick Magnet?'" "You gotta teach me that one, I'd like to suck a face like hers too!" Were the enthusiastic responses of the clubbers.

Keitaro seemed startled by Kitsune's unexpected action, and it seemed to throw his train of thought off its track. She smiled to herself. Kitsune had used this same tactic many times before to achieve many different things. It had almost never failed her.

"Hey there hun, if that's what you wanted, you only had to ask," she said to him with an even more seductive wink. She sat back down but didn't let go of his shirt, dragging him around to her side of the table. "Lets get out of here and get right to it then!"

Keitaro seemed stumped, but only for a moment. His mind quickly returned to its previous line of thought. His eyes seemed to somehow get grayer and his teeth just a little longer. "Nonsense!" His voice was now becoming very low and guttural, and yet at the same time it swayed, the alcoholic influence still telling. He tried pull himself free of Kitsune's grasp, and succeeded in doing so, but failed to keep his balance afterward. He tripped over his own feet and went down.

He didn't get right up. Instead, he just sort of lay where he fell, and very primal sounding cackles began to radiate out of him. These sounds, that didn't sound like anything that should be coming out of a human being no matter _how_ drunk they were, were starting to draw the attention of a larger crowd. As a wave of under-the-breath conversations and handful of gasps passed around the new group of clubbers who were gathering around their table, Kitsune looked down at his cackling form. He lay face up, his deep gray eyes wide open and his impressive array of fangs displayed for all to see as his bestial cackles developed more into full-out laughter that sent a sudden chill down Kitsune's spine.

"Oh my gosh, how is he doing that?" "What the hell did he drink?" "Look at his eyes!" "... and his teeth! When did he slip those on?" The clubbers seemed less amused than before. In fact, those who were already under the influence of one thing or another were starting to look a little frightened. Kitsune's thoughts were racing through her own alcoholic daze, but she was much more experienced it this area than Keitaro was. She managed to form a makeshift backup plan.

"_OK, no more games, it's time to blow this joint ..." _she thought. Pulling herself together, she yanked the tablecloth off of their table and threw it over him. _"I hope all that booze he drank will let this work, or I might be the one that ends up getting dragged out of here in a sack ..." _she thought as she grabbed a full bottle of beer from a nearby clubber and with strength she didn't realize that she had smashed it down on where she guessed his head still was.

"Aaaaahhh ..." came a subdued voice from under the cloth, and with it the wicked sounding cackles ceased. Kitsune didn't miss a beat and rolled Keitaro over so that he could be carried in the tablecloth. Taking out her own wallet, she threw down some extra money of her own.

"Hope you all enjoyed the show, but it's time for us to be going. Keep the change!" She added, nodding to the money she'd just thrown down. Against stunned looks and silence from those surrounding them, she mustered all the alcohol- and adrenaline-powered strength that she call out of her body and gracefully picked up Keitaro's bagged and writhing form and put it up on her shoulders. Or rather, she tried to do it gracefully. In fact, she'd barely gotten him a few inches off the ground when she suddenly found herself struggling to lift him. _"Oh my goodness, how much does this kid weigh!" _Kitsune thought to herself, grunting and huffing with exertion as she strained her muscles to get Keitaro up on her shoulders. When she finally succeeded, she turned to face the door. Putting on her best mischievous grin, she walked as fast as she could out the door. Which wasn't all that fast. In addition to reducing her drinking habit, Koan had persuaded the Fox to take up some quasi-regular exercise, but although she was no longer the completely anaerobic slug that she once was, it would be a mighty stretch to call her athletic. Her adrenaline and alcoholic buzz wore off surprisingly quickly, so even before she'd actually made it out the door she found herself tapping into the last vestiges of her strength reserves.

While being clobbered across the head with a full bottle of beer while already smash-drunk would probably have kept any other person out cold for good long while, Keitaro recovered in a few short minutes. When he opened his eyes, they were their usual color again, and the sight that met them was the interior of the taxi that he had chartered.

"Woah," he said softly. He turned his head at the sound of movement next to him and saw a reservedly chuckling Kitsune sitting beside him. "Hey, you hit me, didn't you!"

Kitsune laughed out loud. "Well you didn't leave me much choice in the matter, it was either drag you out of there or see your face on the late night news."

Keitaro just sighed, put his hand on his forehead and cringed. Kitsune recognized the gesture immediately.

"You've got a hangover already?" She asked incredulously.

"Mmm," was his initial reply. "Hang on a sec." Though his head was murky, he closed his eyes and tried his best to collect his regenerative energy and direct it towards his head and towards the alcohol still flowing through his system. Normally he was capable of regenerating even serious injuries within a minute or so when he focused his energy in this fashion, but with the alcoholic influence still strong in him and his capacity to concentrate thus lessened, it was a good five minutes or so before he had returned himself to his pre-alcohol state. Well, not _quite_ ...

As he opened his eyes again he became aware of the fact that his pants, although they were a pair of the baggy, elastic pants he had acquired that would survive him changing forms, suddenly felt as though they were a few sizes too small around the beltline. He also realized that he was squeezing his legs together so hard that it was almost painful. Last but not least, he noticed that Kitsune appeared to be biting her tongue and was exerting great effort not to look at him, though her eyes darted to and fro a few times. Reaching out with his left arm, he tapped the driver on the shoulder.

"Yes, Mr. Urashima?"

"There," Keitaro said in a strained voice, pointing to a gas station just ahead of them, "I really need to make a stop there!"

25 minutes later, they were parked behind the gas station where the restrooms were, and Keitaro had still not come out. "Is Mr. Urashima OK?" Asked the driver.

Kitsune smiled and suppressed a laugh. "Oh ya, I'm sure he's fine. He just might need .. a little more time, that's all!"

The driver shrugged and turned back to face forward, starting at the door to the men's restroom. _"I sure meet the weirdoes in this job," _he thought to himself.


	20. Kiss the Cook

Naru had expected that Keitaro would be out late when Kitsune's turn rolled around, so there was no retribution leveled at him the next morning. Keitaro had of course completely recovered from his adventure of the previous night long before morning rolled around, and as such he actually woke up at a more usual hour and had a pretty normal, uneventful morning. He didn't get up early enough to help Shinobu make breakfast, but as per his norm he did help her clean up the mess afterwards. Seta and Haruka were not at breakfast, and Naru informed Keitaro that they had both left early in the day yesterday because they both had some business to attend to, Haruka with her tea shop and Seta with a problem that had arisen with his archeological team in his absence. Neither had returned yet. It had been Keitaro's original intention to seek out his aunt for this day, but if she and Seta were both busy then that made the object of his attention for today an easy choice. It had also been his original intention to save Shinobu's day for last, because he had gotten to spend more time with her than anyone other than Naru over the past few days as he helped her make and/or clean up after meals. Indeed, it had been Shinobu's suggestion that he save her for last for that very reason. Keitaro had smiled when she said that and given her a friendly pat on back, promising her an extra-special day when her turn came around. He didn't think she would mind taking her turn a little early.

* * *

Shinobu was sitting at her table in her room drawing when she heard Keitaro's knock. For the past several months she had been working on a manga depicting the events that had taken place around her in the past year, and it had been some concept sketches for this that Suu and Sara had plucked from her hands the day Keitaro had first come home. She was very proud of her project, but she didn't want anyone else getting a look at it until she was done. Then again, she really didn't know when she would end it, because she couldn't imagine when she would consider her story - no, _their_ story - to be over.

"Come in," Shinobu said at the sound of the knock, nonchalantly covering up the page she had been working on as she did so.

Keitaro opened the door and stepped inside. "Hello again Shinobu."

"What's up?"

"Well, I know we had talked about 'saving the best for last' and all, but no one else seems likely to be available today, so how would you feel about taking this day as yours?" He said with a wink.

Excitement bloomed quite visibly in the young girl at his suggestion as it does when one is hit with an unexpected pleasure. "Are you sure that's OK? I mean .. ya, that sounds great! But what about ..."

Keitaro cut her off with a laugh. "Shinobu, you're intelligent, mature, caring, compassionate and hard working. But there's just one area where you've got a long way to go."

Shinobu didn't say anything, but blushed slightly as Keitaro rattled off his compliments.

"You need get comfortable with the idea of receiving things for yourself once in a while without spoiling them by running yourself in circles wondering if someone else should have them instead. You deserve so much more than I can ever see you willingly accepting, but please, if not for yourself, then for me - work on that, will you? You've made giving to others into a way of life for yourself. You really should allow others to give to you sometimes, guilt-free."

Shinobu was momentarily silenced by Keitaro's words, but quickly bounced back. "No promises in the long term, but I'll relent for today at least," she added with an attempt at playfulness.

* * *

Keitaro rented his own vehicle this time, as he didn't anticipate a great deal of alcohol consumption during a day with Shinobu. Keitaro had the car brought to them right at the apartments. Keitaro tipped them well and the rental car delivery drivers went on their way in a second car. Both Keitaro and Shinobu were dressed casually. As they took their seats in the car, Keitaro turned to Shinobu and smiled. "Whatever you want to do, this day is yours. What will it be first, my lady?"

It was not even noon yet, and they had just had breakfast a couple hours ago, so they both agreed that it was a bit early for lunch. Shinobu had asked Keitaro what sort of things he had done with the others, and when Keitaro mentioned that he and Mutsumi had gone to a movie, Shinobu thought that would be a nice start. Keitaro found Shinobu's taste in movies a little more appealing than had been the case with Mutsumi, for she chose a highly-spoken of comedy that had just opened that day. Being so early, there wasn't too much of a crowd, and the two of them had gotten prime seats. After the movie, it was still only mid-afternoon, and they decided to head down to the beach. Keitaro rented a small paddle boat with a shade over the top, and the two of them paddled out into the ocean. It was a pretty popular spot and the area was fairly crowded, but once away from the beach a bit they had enough privacy. Shinobu was clearly already enjoying herself immensely but equally clearly she was holding something back. Keitaro had quickly caught on to that fact but decided to let her bring it up on her own. However, after a short while, Keitaro changed his mind, figuring that he didn't want Shinobu to lessen her enjoyment of the day any by keeping anything to herself that Keitaro was happy to address.

"Forgive me for spoiling the mood a little, but if there's anything you want to say or ask about me, my situation or anything else, you'd be doing yourself a favor to get it off your chest now so that you can enjoy the rest of the day without something weighing you down." He said to her during a brief moment of silence that followed the conclusion of one of the small-talk topics that had dominated their conversation up until this point.

Shinobu looked away for a moment. "Well ... I was wondering about some things ..."

"You can ask me anything, Shinobu."

She kept looking away and stayed silent for a moment before she looked back at Keitaro and spoke.

"Um ... when you ... you know ..."

"Change forms?"

Though Shinobu did her best to hide it, a look of discomfort was becoming apparent on her face. "Yeah."

"When I change forms ...?"

"Does it hurt?"

"Only if you fight it. If you just sort of let it happen, I guess I'd have to call it a neutral sensation, and if you embrace it and/or change of your own free will ... well, I'd have to say it feels kind of good. Kind of an invigorating rush, you know?"

"You don't get scared?"

Keitaro nodded his head. "I was scared out of my wits the first time, there's no doubt about that. When you don't really know what's going on, it can be quite frightening. Once you learn more about yourself, and the nature and design of the whole thing, it gets a lot less scary."

"When you are ... changed ... are you ... still you? Are you in control?"

"Yes, I am."

"Earlier, you had said ... about the one that bit you ..."

"... that it's possible for the best of us to lose control in extreme circumstances?"

Shinobu nodded slightly.

"Well, yes, that's also true. But then, that's true for humans too. And animals, for that matter."

Shinobu didn't say anything right away, and it looked to Keitaro like she was searching for the right thing to say. Keitaro had not wanted to ask her this question up front, but now it seemed like the best way to get the issue cleared up.

"Do I scare you, Shinobu?"

The young girl started at the question. "No! No, you don't! I know you would never hurt me, or any of your other friends! I'm sorry if I gave you that impression!" She rattled of frantically.

Keitaro leaned back a little and let out a few deep chuckles. "It's OK Shinobu. I would have understood if you had said yes. But I'm glad that you said no. Scaring you or anyone else is the last thing that I want to do, but given the nature of my condition, I could hardly hold it against anyone for being at least a little put off by it."

"It's not that sem ... I mean, Keitaro," she began, remembering what Keitaro had asked her about just calling him by name. "I was just worried about _you_ ..."

She caught his quizzical look. "I remember everything that's happened. For the rest of us, all we could do was sit back and watch. You were the one who was going through the most. The whole time you were gone I was always wondering what it must have been like for you, going through all of this away from your friends and your home. It made me sad."

Although he expected something touching like that out of Shinobu, he was still momentarily left without a ready reply.

"I'm glad that things weren't ... and aren't ... as bad as I thought," Shinobu finished.

Keitaro just smiled. "Thank you for your concern, Shinobu. It means a lot to me, it really does."

* * *

The nature of their conversation lightened up from there. They stayed in the boat for another hour or so, and then they moved on. From there they headed downtown, where Keitaro positively encouraged Shinobu into any shop that caught her attention, in which he in turn would encourage her to pick out something that she really liked. True to her colors, she hesitated at first, but eventually, when they ended up at an arts and crafts store, she found an art set that Keitaro didn't need her to say anything to know that she really liked. It had a full compliment of pencils - colored, charcoal, regular, the works - plus pastels and some concentrated watercolor dyes. She lit up like a light bulb when she picked it up and checked it out, and Keitaro didn't wait for her to say anything before stuffing some cash into her hand and insisting that she buy it. Shinobu didn't offer resistance, just a heartfelt thank you and a hug.

* * *

By the time they had finished shop-surfing it was early evening, and they both realized that had been having so much fun that they had lost track of time and skipped lunch.

"Tell me Shinobu, have you ever been to that 5-star seafood restaurant downtown?" Asked Keitaro as the sat back down in the car.

"I think I've been there once, but it was a very long time ago."

"What do you say we go there for dinner?"

"Isn't that place ridiculously expensive? I don't want you to spend too much money on me. Anyplace that you like is OK with me."

"Well, I've never been there, but I've always wanted to try it, and what better occasion than this night. Let's go there!"

"You're so nice, Keitaro, but really, it's OK if we ..."

"You needn't concern yourself about money," Keitaro inserted with a wink. "Least of all for a dinner, given the fact that you've kept everyone at the Hinata Apartments well fed for these past few years."

Shinobu seemed to hesitate for just a moment, then smiled lightly and put her hand on his. "That sounds wonderful, Keitaro. Thank you very much."

"We'll need to go back home and change first, though."

* * *

"Are you guys done already? Come on, even little Shinobu here can be out later than this," said Kitsune with a wink when the two of them walked past the lounge on their way up the stairs.

"Heck no, we're just going to get changed for dinner," replied Keitaro.

"Changed for dinner? Why? Those clothes you guys are already wearing look casual enough, any booze stains won't matter too much!"

Keitaro gave Kitsune a look of friendly reprimand. "I'm not taking her out to drink, Kitsune! Corrupting innocent minds is your job, remember?"

Kitsune just smirked at him and waved as he and Shinobu headed up the stairs. Shinobu scurried off to her room to change, and Keitaro made a quick stop at Naru's room.

"Oh, hey Keitaro. How was your day with Shinobu?"

"It's not over yet, actually. I'm going to take her to that fancy seafood place downtown," replied Keitaro as he walked over to her and gave her a kiss.

Naru decided at that moment that the whole jealousy thing she'd been playing for the past few days was probably past its prime at this point. "That's sounds great, I know Shinobu will love it."

"Have you ever been there by any chance?"

Naru gave a slight grin. "Of course I have. I've been there several times. What, haven't you?"

"Um ... NO. Up until recently how on earth do you think I could have afforded to eat there?"

"Oh, so that's why you never took _me_ there, huh?"

"No, that's not it. You just always seemed more like a beef bowl girl to me ..."

Keitaro dodged Naru's swipe with a hearty laugh. "Anyway, I gotta get changed, so I'll see you later. We'll probably come right home after dinner, I don't want to keep Shinobu out too terribly late. So for once, I guess I can say, see you later _tonight_." With those words, he excused himself from Naru's room and went to his.

* * *

Shinobu had gotten a head start, so she was already waiting by the stairs when Keitaro emerged from his room.

"I don't know that I've ever seen that dress before, Shinobu. It really makes you shine."

Shinobu looked away slightly and smiled, but unusually, did not blush.

"Thank you Keitaro. Your suit looks great too. It even matches my dress."

Keitaro looked down at his own attire for a moment, then back at her. He might not have ever noticed it had Shinobu not said something herself, but it was true - their respective outfits did blend very well together. He shrugged and smiled.

"Shall we be on our way then?"

Shinobu took his arm in her hand. "Let's go."

* * *

"Wow," both Keitaro and Shinobu said in unison as they were led to their table.

"I thought you'd been here before," said Keitaro, noting the surprise in Shinobu's voice.

"I'm pretty sure that I have, but it was a long time ago. Either it's changed since then or I'd just forgotten what a beautiful place it was."

Taking their seats, they began flipping through the menu. Shinobu eyed all the entrées with interest, more related to recognizing all the things that she knew she could make well than with anything else. Keitaro seemed to read this, or maybe he just knew what she was thinking just because he knew her.

"See anything that you haven't made before, Shinobu?" He asked with a playful smile after a short while.

Shinobu looked up from the menu and returned the gesture. "Yeah, I see some. But give me some time."

* * *

They traded cheerful small talk until the waiter arrived and took their orders, then continued until their food arrived. Keitaro had asked Shinobu what item on this menu that she thought she could make best, and had ordered that. Taking a bite, chewed slowly, studying the flavor.

"Well, how is it?" Asked Shinobu. "How does it compare to mine?"

Keitaro swallowed the first bite, then held up a finger as he took another bite. Chewing slowly and deliberately, he again motioned to Shinobu to wait a moment. Shinobu felt a slight ping of anxiety as she awaited his verdict. Swallowing the second bite, Keitaro spoke.

"In all honesty, Shinobu ..." He paused a moment for emphasis. "I don't think I could tell the difference between this and yours if my very life depended on it. When you're old enough you really should work here, or some place like it. Most of these cooks probably took years of culinary school to get where they are, but it's as natural to you as breathing."

Being called the full equal of professional 5-star chefs more than satisfied Shinobu's sensibilities. "Thank you for saying so Keitaro," she replied. "I was actually already thinking about place similar to this one up in Hokkaido," she added with a meek smile. "I've been reading about it online and it's supposed to be the best seafood restaurant in the entire country."

Keitaro smiled back at her in full. "I can think of no better place for you to go. Your skills would go to waste anywhere else."

* * *

The two of them stayed at the restaurant even longer than Keitaro and Mutsumi had for their dinner. Keitaro didn't know a whole lot about fine dining or gourmet food, but he knew just enough to prompt Shinobu with questions and comments that brought her enthusiasm for the conversation to a high point. Keitaro knew of course that Shinobu possessed a wealth of knowledge on the matter, but even he was surprised at the level thereof after he'd gotten her on a roll. Keitaro found it all at least moderately interesting, but more so than that he was interested in hearing Shinobu talk about herself _(even if it did take some goading on his part to get her to do so)_, or more specifically, her plans for her future. It shouldn't - and didn't - really surprise him that Shinobu would have put this much thought into such things by now, but he was impressed all the same. This girl was going places. He knew it, and she knew it too - even if she was shy about saying so herself.

* * *

They got home around 11pm, a little later than Keitaro had intended, but not too terribly late. No one else was downstairs. Shinobu was in high spirits but was still visibly tired by then, so she thanked Keitaro again for a wonderful evening and excused herself to bed, but not before Keitaro excused her from breakfast duty, taking the responsibility for himself. Shinobu seemed as though she were about to offer a mild protest, but Keitaro said that it was part of "her day" not to have to be underslept tomorrow. She just yawned and smiled, thanked Keitaro one more time, and was on her way.

* * *

Naru was just crawling into bed when Keitaro walked into her room.

"Good, I'm glad you're still up." He said.

"How was dinner?"

"Very nice, thanks. How was your day?"

Naru shrugged sleepily. "Uneventful. Hung out with Kitsune for a while. Actually cracked out the old schoolbooks again for a while."

Keitaro nodded and kneeled down next to her. "Yeah, school hasn't exactly been at the forefront of my mind this past year either. Kind of funny when you consider that school was our whole lives in days long past."

"A series of life-altering events have a way of interrupting one's previous plans."

Keitaro cracked a small smile. "Indeed they do."

At that point he excused himself for a moment to go change, then came back to Naru's room when he was ready for bed himself. As he joined her under the covers, he said, "by the way, I told Shinobu that I would make breakfast for her since we were out a little later than I had anticipated. Would you care to assist?"

Naru seemed to quickly count in her head the hours of sleep that would be possible if she said yes, and apparently deemed the count acceptable. "Sure," she said.

Keitaro smiled. "Good. I am enjoying this time with everyone, but I'm starting to miss the time with you as well."

Naru leaned over and gave him a light kiss on the forehead. "I've been missing you too, but I think it's great that you're giving everyone some attention. Who's left anyway?"

"Haruka and Seta, and probably Sara too, although I have a feeling the last named two at least, if not all of them, might end up sharing a day. Seems like they've been pretty busy these past few days."

"They sure have. I haven't seen a whole lot more of them than you."

Keitaro nodded. "Well, if we're gonna make breakfast tomorrow then we should probably get some sleep."

"Good idea," said Naru as she turned off the light. "Goodnight Keitaro. I love you."

Keitaro smiled as he laid back and closed his eyes. "I love you too, Naru. See you in the morning."


	21. A Little Family Time

Considering that she was used to physically exerting herself to the very limits of her body for longer periods than this, Motoko would never have guessed that simply studying texts could be so exhausting. She now held a new level of respect for both Naru and Keitaro for the incredible tenacity in studying they had shown at the height of their Tokyo University ambition. She had arrived at Tsuruko's school nearly 72 hours ago and had not set foot outside the archive since. She hadn't even seen Tsuruko herself - she wasn't around when Motoko arrived and Motoko didn't spend much time looking for her, she just left the message that she was here for Tsuruko with some of the other instructors. Fortunately she had run into a few of her old friends there and they had at least once a day provided Motoko with food and water, because Motoko might very well have neglected those needs too had she been left to her own devices. As it was, she had slept for all of 2 or 3 hours during all this time, so she was tired, and she was hot, dusty, and sweaty too - the ventilation in the archive was less than ideal, many of the texts she had dug out looked as though they had never been touched in the lifetimes of anyone connected to the school today, if the thick layers of dust coating them were any indication. 

This discomforts aside, Motoko was astounded at the volume of information these old texts contained. None of them specifically used the words 'Lycan,' 'vampire,' or 'werewolf,' but in the context it was pretty clear what it was talking about. She was also amazed at the ability of whomever had written them to translate the abstract and ethereal Ki sensations that she had experienced with Keitaro into written words. She found surprisingly complete texts that corroborated everything that Keitaro had told and shown her, but went into more detail, particularly in the historical context. There was a wealth of information on vampires as well. Of particular interest to Motoko were equally detailed and easily understandable descriptions of the Ki energies of vampires, by the time she had covered those volumes she was pretty sure that she would be able to recognize a vampire by his or her energies if said individual let them slip at all. However, it also said that, as Keitaro had done, vampires could also learn to rein in and control their energies.

While issues of Ki signatures were of great personal interest to Motoko, she had kept in mind that her main objective was to find any sign that this school was somehow involved with the vampire community, or more importantly, any sign that foreign vampires might be able to use the school, its resources and talent, for its own purposes, either with or without the cooperation of its members. She had poured through countless volumes in the past three days that had covered, or at least addressed, virtually every other relevant topic that she could imagine, but there was not one word that said anything about any kind of relationship between the school and vampires. Granted, she had certainly not read anywhere near everything in the archive, but she knew how to look for specific information there and if there was something relevant that she had missed, it was deliberately hidden from prying eyes by categorizing it incorrectly or otherwise making it undetectable by standard searches.

* * *

My mid afternoon, Tsuruko had returned. The message was duly passed on to her that Motoko was here and that she was in the archive chamber. Tsuruko thanked the messenger and made her way to the archives.

"Motoko? Are you in here?"

Silence greeted Tsuruko's words. She walked all the way into the room and closed the door behind her. After she had taken a few more steps she could hear the sound of slow, steady breathing.

"Motoko?"

Rounding a bookshelf, she saw Motoko slumped over a table, sound asleep. With a cocked eyebrow, Tsuruko walked over to her. There was a massive pile of old books all around her on the table, and going by the dust caked all over Motoko and the scent of dried sweat, Tsuruko had no trouble believing what her student teacher had told her about Motoko having not come out of the archives in 3 days.

"_What on earth was she so interested in all of a sudden?" _Tsuruko thought to herself. Quietly she opened on the of the books on the top of the pile closest to her.

* * *

It wasn't much more than an hour later when Motoko groggily came around. She shook her head a few times and stood up and stretched. "Ug," she said to herself. Her head throbbed from the dust and stale air she had been breathing for 3 days. She walked heavily out of the archive and headed over to the office. Motoko hoped that there was unoccupied cabin that she could take for the day. Most of the younger and newer students that lived there simply spread out their bedrolls on the mats in the training rooms, but older, more advanced students could have a small cabin to themselves, the idea being the solitude would serve them well for the meditative and book studies that were part of the advanced curriculum. Motoko had been the youngest student in the history of the dojo to have had her own cabin. She also hoped that Tsuruko was back. Motoko really did want to see her sister again. The last time they had met, although all had ended well, had not been under the most favorable of circumstances.

* * *

Tsuruko was indeed in the office when Motoko opened the door.

"Hello Motoko. Good too see you again," Tsuruko said.

"You too, Tsuruko. How have things been here?"

"Just fine, thank you. And how is life at the Hinata Apartments?"

"Oh, you know, never a dull moment. But wonderful all the same."

"Good to hear."

Motoko tried to smile, but it turned into a yawn. "Listen, Tsuruko ... I don't suppose you've got an empty cabin that I might take for the day?"

Tsuruko laughed softly. "Good idea. You look like you just got back from a wilderness course."

"I feel about that way too."

Tsuruko opened a cabinet on the wall, took out a small key, and handed it to Motoko. "Number 9 is available. I trust you remember where the cabins are."

Motoko yawned again. "Of course. Thank you Tsuruko."

"My pleasure. Welcome home."

Motoko managed to smile without yawning this time. She had long since come to regard the Hinata Apartments as her home, but this place ... well, at the very least, it was her home away from home.

"Say, will you have some spare time tomorrow? I'd like to catch up with you a bit. It's been a long time," said Tsuruko after a moment.

"You took that idea right out of my head. Sounds great," was Motoko's reply.

Tsuruko smiled at her and turned back to the papers she had been reading when Motoko had first come in. "See you tomorrow then, Motoko. Sleep well."

"I will. Thank you again for your hospitality." With that, Motoko bowed out and retired to her cabin.

* * *

Back at the Hinata Apartments, breakfast had come and gone and neither Haruka nor Seta had yet come back. After helping Shinobu clean up from breakfast, Keitaro headed over to Haruka's tea shop, figuring that was the logical place to start looking for her. He found her in the back room office.

"Knock knock," he said as he also rapped lightly on the open door to the office.

"Come in," said Haruka without looking up. Keitaro squirmed his way in past the door and closed it behind him. At the sound of the door closing, she looked up.

"Oh, good morning Keitaro."

"Good morning Haruka. Is this a bad time?" He asked, nodding to the small stack of paperwork in front of her.

"I can take a break. What's up?"

"Well, I was hoping that you might have some free time today, but I suppose my question has more or less been answered ..."

Haruka nodded her head slightly. "Well, there are a lot of things that need taking care of around here today, I'm afraid ..." she said. "But I suppose I'll have to eat sometime, at the very least. We could plan on doing lunch."

Keitaro nodded. "Better something than nothing. What time is good for you?"

"I'll call you. You going to be home?"

"Yeah, I'll be home."

"Alright then. I'm sorry I can't give you a more definite time right now, but it seems that my hired help was unequal to the tasks I gave them and there's a lot of catching up to do."

Keitaro snickered a little. Doing his best to imitate his aunt's voice, he said, "If you want something done ..."

"... do it your damn self. Damn straight," Haruka finished. "See what happens when people don't listen to me? Even _me_? I ignore my own better judgment just once and the shop goes to hell in a hand basket."

"Anything I could help with?"

Suddenly Haruka's eyes narrowed a bit, the way they did when she became suspicious of something. "Wait a minute ... is this your responsible way of trying to give me my day of your attentions? That 'some time with each of you individually' that you talked about?"

Keitaro shrugged and nodded.

Haruka chuckled softly. "Well, I really need to finish this audit and then I need to do an inventory count, but I suppose the rest could wait. If you would care to get the count started for me, I could be done that much faster," she said as she picked up the clipboard with the relevant papers on it and offered it to Keitaro.

Keitaro accepted the clipboard and smiled. "I'd be happy to."

* * *

It took the two of them about three hours to finish those projects. As Keitaro helped Haruka put the last of the back stock back up on the top shelf in the storage room, he said, "are you sure that's all you want to do right now? I'd be happy to help you out for the rest of the day if needs be."

Haruka smiled at him as she stepped down from the ladder. "I appreciate the thought, and I may take you up on that in the near future, but I'm sure you didn't spend your time with other girls moving boxes. I wouldn't want to stand out in your mind as the boring one."

Keitaro shook his head sincerely. "Don't worry Haruka. If there's one adjective that I don't think has ever been used to describe you, it's boring."

"I assume you've already had breakfast?"

"You haven't?"

Haruka huffed. "No, I haven't. I've been busting my ass since sunrise and I could really use something to eat. Would you mind tagging along with me while I grab some grub?"

"Not at all. I could nibble."

* * *

For all their differences, Keitaro and Haruka did at least share their practical approach to eating out. Haruka went to the very same fast and inexpensive restaurant that Keitaro frequented himself, and ordered the same beef bowl that he usually got too.

"I'm surprised that I've never run into you here," said Keitaro with a laugh. "I've eaten here everyday for weeks at a time for years."

"Your schedule has always been a bit freer than mine in terms of when you have the option of going to lunch," answered Haruka in between bites. "When I'm not staying at the Hinata Apartments I tend to be a few hours behind the rest of the world when it comes to meals."

Keitaro had ordered the smallest size of the same entrée, but even though she had ordered the largest size plus a side dish, Haruka finished her food first. Haruka politely declined Keitaro's offer of a drink, but was in fact the one who suggested first that they go do something together. Keitaro asked her what she did with herself when she wasn't hard at work at the shop or lending a hand to Seta. She smiled slimly at the question.

* * *

"A military training facility! Why do you have access to a military training facility?" Keitaro asked incredulously as Haruka confirmed that that was indeed their destination.

"Let's just say that I've made some varied contacts in my time. Thanks in no small part to you-know-who and his penchant for digging up trouble, after running with him for a short while I quickly found that tactical firearms training was a necessary job skill. Pretty hard to come by in Japan for civilians, but easily acquired elsewhere. Then, you know ... Seta and I show off a bit at a competition one day, impress some local officials and ... well, I probably shouldn't say anything more, but I think you get the idea," she said. "I admit that I didn't practice as often as I used to after I'd sort of settled down with the tea shop, but after you brought home some stray dogs that one night, I thought it might be prudent to warm up my bull's-eye a bit," she gave Keitaro a squint that he wasn't quite sure if it was lighthearted or not. In any case, it took a moment for him to catch her little jab.

"Hey, this is supposed to be quality family time, not a scolding session with mommy." He made sure his own tone was also not quite distinguishable as either playful or reprimanding.

"What'd you call me?"

* * *

_BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM! _ Keitaro watched with no small feeling of being impressed as Haruka blew through her clip at near full-auto speed. The target silhouette hung 25 yards down the range, and she printed a 2-inch group at the very center of the kill zone without a single one of her 16 shots hitting outside of it. Indeed, only a couple of shots spoiled it from being a 1.5 inch group. Placing the empty pistol on the counter, she took off her ear muffs and turned to look at Keitaro, who took his off as well.

"That was very impressive, Haruka."

"Why thank you Keitaro," she replied, rather matter-of-factly.

"You still carry silver bullets?"

Haruka nodded. "Yeah, although naturally I don't practice with them, that would be awfully expensive. They've got slightly different ballistic properties than these cheap rounds here, but it's close enough for training purposes."

Keitaro looked downrange again at Haruka's target, then back at her and smiled meekly. "I knew there was a reason I'm still afraid to piss you off."

Haruka grinned wryly. "Now why don't you show me what _you've_ got, nephew?" She said, motioning to the pistol.

Keitaro nodded lightly and stood up to the counter, picking up the pistol and loading a fresh magazine into it. "I had never even touched a gun in my life until about 4 months ago. Whatever happens here, blame my predecessors," he said with a slight chuckle as he pressed the button that brought Haruka's target to them. He took it off the clip and handed it to Haruka with another respectful nod, then clipped on a fresh target and sent it back down range. Haruka took a step back and they both put their ear muffs back on. Keitaro centered himself and took aim.

_BLAM!_

About a centimeter from dead center.

_BLAM! _

A little closer and just higher.

_BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!_

Three steady but spaced shots. The second shot took a piece out of the center circle, and the third shot was half inside the hole made by the second.

_BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!_

Slightly less spacing between these shots. Keitaro's group was looking less neat that Haruka's, as his shots, though only slightly farther from center than hers, were a bit more scattered from one another.

_BLAM!BLAM!BLAM!BLAM!BLAM!_

He ripped off his last 5 shots at a similar speed to that that Haruka had done. He clearly absorbed the recoil better than Haruka had, but that did not necessarily translate into better accuracy. His rapid fire sequence placed his farthest-from-center hits, and when he brought his target in, it was clear that Haruka had won this match. They both took off their ear muffs and Keitaro grabbed the ruler. 16 distinct holes on the target just fit within a 4 inch circle around each other. Haruka nodded to him.

"That's still very good for that range, Keitaro. All of your hits are still well inside the kill zone."

Keitaro shrugged lightly. "Firearms are a relatively new skill for my kind. There really hasn't been enough time for much communicable skill to have built up in my particular line and I have no prior experience."

Haruka smacked him lightly across the top of his head and smiled. "Quit making lame excuses. You lost to an ordinary human fair and square. Deal with it."

Keitaro blushed slightly and let out a few quiet laughs. It wasn't always pleasant, but the blunt, too-the-point nature of his aunt never ceased to amaze him. "You're hardly a 'normal' human. About the only person I've ever seen who might just be more 'abnormal' than you would be Tsuruko."

Haruka seemed momentarily unsure whether that was a friendly jab or a genuine comment, but quickly decided that it was probably the latter. "Well, thanks .. I think ..." she added with a wink. She paused a moment, then motioned to the pistol on the counter. "Shall we continue?"

Keitaro smiled widely. "Yes. Lets."

* * *

The shooting continued for nearly two more hours, and the Urashimas burned though several hundred rounds of ammo in the process. The would both take a turn emptying a magazine and then they'd talk a bit in between. At first they mostly talked about their groups, which had improved for both of them by the end of their session, but they ended up talking about themselves and each other some as well. Both were again rather somberly surprised at how little they really knew about each other beyond that which related to their mutual home, mutual friends, and the most obvious of things even from the relative small talk that came out in between shooting turns. Unbeknownst to each other both made a mental promise to themselves to make it a point to work on that deficiency in the immediate future. At the end of their shooting session Haruka had reluctantly excused herself on the ground that she still had a lot to do at the tea shop, but promised to make more time for him and the rest of the residents from here on out, especially for the next week or so that Seta was still gone. When she mentioned Seta, Keitaro had gotten the wicked thought to turn the tables on Haruka for those times in the past she'd gotten a chuckle out of the antics between him and Naru, but Haruka had craftily closed the conversation in such a way that would have eliminated any tact from anything Keitaro could have said to that end. As it was, Keitaro and Haruka gave each other a friendly hug and, after Haruka dropped Keitaro off at the apartments, went their separate ways.

* * *

"Come in," said Naru at the sound of a knock on her door. She seemed almost surprised that it was Keitaro who stepped inside.

"Weren't you going to spend the day with Haruka? I'm surprised to see you home so early."

Keitaro nodded rather regretfully. "I managed to spend some time with her, but she still has a lot to do at the tea shop. I offered to help, but she said most of what she had left to do were pretty much one-person jobs."

Naru nodded once in acknowledgement. "I don't know how she manages to help out here sometimes. She's such an industrious woman."

"I wish Seta was in town. He and Sara are the only people here that I know even less about than my own aunt," he said with a weak chuckle.

"Oh, Seta is out of town?"

"Yeah, I knew he was dealing with some problem with his archeology team, but I guess I didn't think that he was actually out of town either. Makes sense though."

Naru just nodded. Keitaro walked over to where she was sitting and sat down right behind her, putting his arms her as he did so. He sighed a small sigh of pleasure and rested his chin on her shoulder. Naru smiled and looked up at him from the university papers she had been reading.

"You sound happy."

"I am," he replied dreamily. "Spending some time with everyone this past week has been wonderful. I've only been home for a week and it already feels like I never left."

Naru raised an eyebrow and nodded her head again. "Now that you mention it ... it really does seem as though it's been longer than a week, doesn't it?"

"Yeah."

They were both silent for a few minutes before Keitaro spoke again.

"You got plans for dinner?"

Naru smiled at him. "Nothing beyond the Shinobu Special at the Dining Room Café."

Keitaro returned her smile. "You once complained that I had never taken you to that restaurant that I went to with Shinobu. Would tonight be a good time to rectify that?"

Naru laughed softly and pushed Keitaro's head far enough off of her shoulder for her to give him a kiss.

"Tonight would be great."


	22. The End of Pax Hinata

The next two years passed with very little reference to anything about Lycans or vampires or any such things. He had warned early on that he anticipated being summoned to his Den somewhat often as issues regarding the incursion of foreign vampires were expected to increase, but no such thing occurred. As it was, he only had to leave home for the Den 3 times during those 2 years, and the longest he was gone any of those times was 10 days. The only regular reference to Keitaro's lycanthropy, albeit a rather muted one, was that he always took nights with full moons to himself - he explained that it was rather painful to suppress the change during that time, and that he'd just assume be alone. No one argued. Motoko had returned a few days after Keitaro's day of shooting with Haruka, and Keitaro was pleased to hear that she had found nothing that led her to believe that the foreign vampires would get anything useful out of her old school, although he was surprised that they knew so much about both Lycans and vampires. Motoko seemed further uplifted when she came home, and she spoke of spending some quality time with her sister, soothing any frayed nerves between them and making complete amends for any bad blood that remained after their last meeting. There hadn't been much on Motoko's end and there had been even less on Tsuruko's, but it had nevertheless felt good to clear up even those small resentments. Though she only actually went back to the school a handful of times in those two years, she kept in much closer touch with her sister by phone and computer than she ever had before.

Keitaro, Naru and Mutsumi had all successfully entered Tokyo U together the year after Keitaro's return. Mutsumi had, much to everyone's initial horror, signed up for a diving class - visions of Mutsumi passing out 100 feet below the surface flashed across everyone's minds. Their best efforts to talk her out of it all failed, and they all shared a tense afternoon on the day of Mutsumi's first dive in the open ocean. However, she had come home, safe and sound, right on time that night. And the night of her next dive. And the next one. Indeed, through the combination of some extra physical activity and improved nutrition on her part, her infamous frailty seemed to steadily improve.

Seta was gone a full two weeks longer than anyone had last heard, much to the growing irritation of Haruka, but he finally did come back, and any trace of irritation that Haruka might have had before melted into meek embarrassment when he presented her with a ruby-studded gold and silver pendant that he had brought back with him. Suu was certainly happy to see Sara again.

* * *

All of the relationships at the Hinata apartments had grown stronger in those two years. By the end of that time, there was no longer any reservations or shyness about Seta and Haruka's relationship, either between themselves or between them and anyone else. Not that any doubts on the matter had not in fact been long since settled, but they both just completely dropped the subterfuge. They never got as lovey-dovey as Keitaro and Naru occasionally did in the knowing presence of others, but that was more a sign of the differing styles of the persons involved than with any denial of the situation. Keitaro and Naru's relationship was already pretty solid at the start of that time, but those two years saw their relationship develop well beyond the proverbial honeymoon phase that one might say that they had been riding at first and into something more complete and balanced. They had had a few disagreements about one thing or another from time to time, but instead of the physical, verbal and emotional violence that had characterized these situations in times now long past, they respectfully and responsibly worked out a compromise when an immediate solution was not clear. They always came out of these disagreements with both a greater understanding of the differences they still had and greater appreciation for the progress they had made in working through them peacefully.

* * *

Now that he was back in school, Keitaro was unable to take another sojourn with Seta as he had hoped to do, but he did manage to work with Seta a little here and there on things that could be brought home. Much to everyone's pleasant surprise, Koan had helped Kitsune get a job at the hospital shortly after the school semester had started, and she had actually held the job. She made decent money at it too. On paper, her duties were run special errands, make deliveries and pick-ups, and run things around within the hospital as needed, but she had quickly become very well liked among coworkers and patients alike, and an unofficial duty that became regularly assigned to her was that of the 'official' hospital cheerer-upper. She almost unwittingly had proven surprisingly effective in helping distraught patients and/or their relatives calm down, and she was equally appreciated by the rest of the staff for the same reason when someone died or other such unpleasantry took place. It was as if she had learned how to take her natural tendency to inappropriately make light of situations and do so in a much more appropriate way that was actually tactful and helpful to the situation at hand. So useful in this manner was Kitsune that if the hospital had prior warning of an upcoming scenario of that sort, they would send a spare nurse or doctor to run any time-critical errands for that time if at all possible so that she would be there to help relieve tensions. Ultimately, her responsibility level had skyrocketed, and yet she still managed to retain the carefree and fun-loving aura that she had always been famous for.

There were no such dramatic changes for Shinobu or Suu, although both were doing very well. Sara was more or less her usual self by the end of those two years as well, although she had matured a little and had become more amiable, although the spitfire spirit for which _she_ was well known was never too far beneath the surface whenever an antagonizing situation arose.

* * *

It was on a warm summer night that Keitaro, Naru, and Motoko had gone on a weekend retreat in the mountains near Tsuruko's school. Being as warm as it was, they hadn't brought a tent, and three small backpacks held everything they had brought with them, which wasn't much - the concept of a getaway was, after all, somewhat spoiled if one brought too much of their normal life with them. They were in a small clearing where they gazed up at the open, clear sky, and the small sliver of the moon did little to blot out the stars. A soft breeze played across them. Naru sat on a large log, Keitaro was laying on the same log with his head on Naru's leg and Motoko was sitting on the ground with her back leaning on the log.

"I sometimes forget what a nice area this is, Motoko," Keitaro said softly.

"I do miss it sometimes, I can't deny it. Hinata is a nice area too, but it's just not the same as this." She replied.

"You guys should see what they've got for camping in America. They've got forests there the size of Japan. You really want to 'get away from it all,' there you really can," Keitaro said with a chuckle. "Then again, they've also got deserts the likes of which you could pack as much water as you can carry and still not get out alive if you haven't got a car or helicopter."

* * *

Two pairs of eyes were watching the three friends from about 300 yards away and maybe 50 yards higher up the mountain.

"Are you sure that's him?" Asked the standing figure as he looked through a pair of night vision binoculars.

The figure who lay prone behind a similarly scoped semi-automatic rifle huffed and replied with obvious irritation. "We've been following him since sundown and you've looked back and forth between him and the pictures every 10 minutes since then. Do you want me to just go down there and ask him?"

The standing figure lowered his binoculars and looked down at the sniper with a glare. "Well excuse me for not wanting to fuck this up. You heard what the Regent said he'd do to any team that failed to bring back their assigned targets without a damn good excuse. Somehow I don't think 'gee, we thought we had him but he turned out to be an ordinary human' is going to fly. What say you, hotshot?"

"I say that we've got a dozen photographs of this guy and that man down there looks exactly like each and every one of them, and that I'm sick of hearing you say 'wait, we need to be sure.' I don't know what you are waiting for, but I'm sick of waiting for it. Let's just do our job and get the hell out of here, OK!"

"Fine. Go get 'im, hotshot. Just remember, don't stick 'im too many times. We need him alive."

"Never thought I'd hear myself say this about a Lycan, but this one's probably more useful to us alive than you are," the sniper muttered under his breath as he lined up Keitaro in the crosshairs of his scope.

"Wait! What about those humans? Wha ..."

"Fuck 'em," said the sniper, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

Neither Naru nor Motoko heard the suppressed report of the far-off rifle over their conversation. Keitaro heard it, but the bullet arrived before he had processed what the sound was. All three of them certainly heard the soft thud of the round finding its mark.

"URK!" Was all Keitaro got out, as a combination the force of the bullet impacting his stomach and reflex caused him to shoot upright, hitting his head on Naru's elbow as he did so.

"What the heck was that about, Kei ..." began Naru as she rubbed her elbow.

_thud thud_

"RRRRRGH!" The second two shots drew a much more recognizable groan out of Keitaro and caused him to fall off the log. Landing face up on the side opposite of Motoko, Naru looked down at him and even in the low light could clearly a quickly spreading pattern of blood on his stomach.

"Wha? Keitaro!" She screamed. Instinctively, Motoko jumped to her feet. She too turned and saw Keitaro. He now lay gasping like a fish out of water.

"Keitaro! What happened!"

Keitaro stopped gasping, clenched his teeth and partially sat up. "Silver," he squeezed out from between his teeth as he forced himself onto his feet, his left arm pressed against his bloody stomach.

* * *

"No! You hit him again and you might kill him! How many times do I have to tell you that we need this particular animal alive!" Said the figure with the binoculars angrily to the sniper.

"Are you fucking blind? He's still on his feet! You want to go down there and take him while he's still standing?" Replied the sniper with equal anger in his voice.

"I guess I'd better if I don't want to fail our mission, hadn't I?" The first figure replied shortly, and took off towards the clearing without waiting for a reply from his partner.

"Why do I always get paired up with the idiots and the assholes?" Muttered the sniper again to himself as he watched his partner speed towards their quarry.

* * *

"No, Keitaro! Don't move! You need to .." began Motoko as she picked up her sword and made as though to restrain Keitaro.

"No, we _(rrrgh!)_ have to get moving right now!" Sputtered Keitaro as he instead grabbed a hold of both Motoko and Naru and began stumbling towards the trees.

"Keitaro, please stop! Are you trying to kill yourself? Let Motoko help you!" Cried Naru as she was led on by Keitaro.

"No! Goddammit, think about it! How many people do you really think there are that are as crazy as Haruka and carry silver bullets as a matter of course! It has to be those OOF!"

As if to finish his sentence for him, a speeding blur flew right between Naru and Motoko and slammed into Keitaro from behind, knocking him a good 10 feet forward. As the blur of motion became visibly determinate again, Motoko and Naru could see a man who looked a good head and shoulders larger than Keitaro pinning him to the ground. In a flash it looked as though he was about to get Keitaro's arms behind his back and into a pair of extremely large and solid-looking handcuffs, but Keitaro managed to get his right arm free, and swung it around behind him to deliver a strong backarm to his attacker's head, letting out a scream as he twisted his stomach muscles as he did so. His strike threw his attacker off balance long enough for him to roll over on his back, but only just. The larger man quickly regained control of the situation. Re-pinning Keitaro to the ground by the shoulders, his eyes shown blue and he grinned wickedly, revealing a long pair of fangs from his upper jaw.

"That's it, go ahead and fight me. You'll just make my job all the sweeter," he said malevolently. He moved his left arm so that it was pinning Keitaro by the neck, quickly shifted his right leg off of Keitaro and with his free right hand delivered a fearsome punch right on top of Keitaro's gunshot wounds.

"AAAAAggggpp!" Keitaro tried to scream, but his voice was quickly cut off by the surge of his own blood that squirted out of his mouth. The grip that his hands had had on the collar of his attackers' shirt broke, his arms fell to his side and his whole body seemed to go more or less limp.

All of this had happened in just a few seconds.

As the vampire grinned wickedly again and grabbed Keitaro's arms again, Keitaro saw Naru running towards him from his left.

"GET OFF OF HIM YOU SON OF A BITCH!" She screamed, and launched a flying punch at the vampire that would have knocked the stuffing out of any human being. The punch connected with the vampire's back, but only drew a hiss of annoyance out of him as he turned to face the irritating human. He never had the chance to retaliate though. Distracted and already angry, he either didn't notice the second irritating human coming at him from the other side, or just assumed that it brought another love tap with it. A metallic flash passed between his head and the rest of his body, the smaller segment tumbling down and bouncing off Keitaro's chest, and the larger segment being violently kicked off of him.

* * *

"Ha ha ha! How embarrassing! Killed by a little girl with a sword!" Laughed the sniping vampire to himself as he watched the whole thing unfold through the scope of his rifle. He had almost shot the girl with the sword, but at the last moment had decided to see how his idiotic partner dealt with the situation himself. He had expected an amusing show for sure, but this was just getting too good. _"Oh well," _he thought to himself. _"I told them that this guy was an idiot. Just more glory for me! ... and maybe a little snack too. That other girl looks pretty rich ... "_ With that thought he folded up the bipod of his rifle, slung it over his shoulder, and bolted down the mountain himself.

* * *

Motoko kicked the vampire off of Keitaro with a look of disgust, and quickly resheathed her sword. Having made an educated guess as to the direction that both the gunshots and presumably the vampire had come from, she quickly grabbed Keitaro from under his arms and dragged him behind a thick patch of trees that would cover them from that supposed direction. Naru skidded to her knees at his side as Motoko also dropped to his side and lifted up his shirt to get a look at his wounds. She didn't like what she saw.

"Oh no ... Keitaro ... are you ... oh no ..." Naru stammered.

Motoko pulled out a small knife and cut Keitaro's shirt off and folded it into a makeshift pad. Blood was streaming both out of three marble-sized holes in Keitaro's stomach and his mouth, and he seemed to be having trouble staying conscious. She began to apply pressure to his wounds when Keitaro revived a little and grabbed her arm.

"No," he said weakly. "The bullets ... get them out ..." he managed, sounding very winded.

"Get them out? How are we supposed to do that without hurting you even more?" Asked Motoko.

Keitaro struggled to prop himself up against a tree. He just barely made it. Taking a few deep breaths, he grabbed a short but thick piece of wood and put it in his mouth. His expression changed into a pained snarl.

"Wike VIFF!" He shouted through the branch in his mouth, and thrust his own fingers into one of the bullet holes. Naru and Motoko were not left to stare idly for long.

"OOO IT! NOW!" He shouted as loudly as he really could with a stick of wood in his mouth. Motoko only hesitated for another moment before reaching her thumb and index finger into another of the bullet holes. The wood in Keitaro's mouth splintered audibly and his teeth began to form into fangs as Keitaro succeeded in removing one of the bullets. Naru then sought out the last bullet as gently as she could as Motoko plucked out the second bullet. A moment later, Naru removed the third one. Keitaro spat out the now punctured, crushed and bloody branch with a gasp as her fingers came out. She and Motoko started at him intently.

"Keitaro?" Said Naru quietly.

With the silver out of his body, Keitaro could feel his energy returning. His eyes glazed over gray and his teeth grew a little longer. Clenching his teeth, but with his eyes open this time, he focused everything he had onto the wounds in his stomach. The wounds began to close up just as the sound of someone or something crashing through the woods at high speed reached his ears. A moment later, Motoko and then Naru heard it as well. Motoko strained her eyes in the direction of the sound, and Naru looked down at Keitaro. He was also looking in the direction of the sound, and quickly got to his feet. He said nothing, but let out a quiet but frightening snarl. Hurling himself in a direction just off to the side of the oncoming sound, his friends could just make out the change in size, shape and color of the blur of motion as it vanished from view into the trees.

* * *

The sniper vampire stopped running, held his rifle at the ready again and cursed himself for listening to his late partner when he had stopped him from putting a few more rounds into the Lycan. He had heard and recognized the unmistakable sound of something else tearing through the woods at a speed that only a vampire or Lycan could be capable of, and the process of elimination made pretty clear which one it had to be. Obviously, either the Lycan himself or his pets had managed to dig out the bullets. Just in case it was the latter, the vampire promised himself to grant the Lycan the honor of seeing his little toys butchered messily before putting the animal out for his trip to the accommodations that had been prepared for him and all the other 'locals' that had been determined to be worth interrogating. Staying absolutely silent, he held his rifle trained in the direction of the last sound. The oncoming sounds had stopped just a few moments after his own.

Suddenly hearing a growl behind him, he instantly spun around and quickly fired two rounds. But the Lycan was already gone. The rounds hit nothing. The vampire cocked an eyebrow just as he heard another growl, this one nearly behind him and to the left. He spun again and fired two more rounds. Again, there was nothing there. Then, silence.

"_You think you're real clever, don't you?" _Thought the vampire with a mental smirk. _"I've been stuffing your kind for almost 5 decades now. You're not as amazing as you think you are. I'll make sure you understand that before you're put out of your misery."_

_

* * *

_

Keitaro was feeling more frustration than anything else. He had tested this vampire's reaction time and found that he was quite fast. This was going to be a real challenge if he didn't want to take any more silver bullets, which he really didn't - given the prowess this vampire had already demonstrated, Keitaro didn't think this one would make the same careless mistake as the last one if he managed to down him again. More than that, he didn't want to see Motoko or Naru get hurt, as he knew would most likely happen if the vampire found them. A few long minutes passed.

The vampire then heard the sound of something else creeping quietly through the trees. Not exactly in his direction, but seemingly close nonetheless. Too slowly and too noisily to be the Lycan. It had to be one of his pets. The vampire grinned sadistically to himself without lowering his rifle or his guard. Yes, this was getting very interesting indeed. Very slowly and without a sound, he began moving towards the new sound, never tuning his senses away from catching the slightest hint to the Lycan's location.

"_Ah, the girl with the sword ..." _the vampire thought to himself. _"It will almost be a shame to kill this one, seeing the service she just performed for the good of the vampire nation. But she will make lovely bait."_

_

* * *

_

Motoko had gone to look for Keitaro after a few minutes of silence had passed after the last gunshots. She had only just managed to convince Naru not to go with her on the grounds that she was not skilled as she was when it came to moving without making noise. She was at her highest state of readiness and had her sword at the ready, but nevertheless, although she heard the vampire come at her before he actually reached her, he was far too fast for her to react in any effective way. The force of the vampire hitting her knocked the sword right out of her grip, and he held her a foot off the ground by her neck against a tree.

"I want to hear you scre..." he began, but as with his partner, he wasn't allowed to finish his last sentence. He hadn't dropped his guard as his partner had, but nevertheless, the split second division of his focus that he used to catch Motoko was all the window that Keitaro needed. Before Motoko could choke on even one breath, the vampire dropped her and whirled to face the dark blur of motion that charged him from his right side and just behind, but Keitaro was already on top of him. With a roar Keitaro slammed into the vampire with several times the force that the first vampire had done to him. The vampire barely managed to squeak out the beginning of a scream before a powerful clawed hand wrapped itself around his jaw and thrust his head upwards, but what really silenced him in that instant was the bear-trap jaw that snapped shut around his neck. Instantly the vampire was nearly decapitated by the bite, a task finished by the clawed hand that held the head, which, as it tore the head free from the last strand of flesh holding it to the owner, flung it far to the side. For all of 3 or 4 more seconds, Keitaro rent the headless corpse with tooth and claw alike, but those few seconds were enough to tear it into at least 3 or 4 big pieces.

Motoko had been given little chance to react to being grabbed by the vampire, but she watched with awe as Keitaro dismembered it as quickly and easily as she might cut through a watermelon with her sword. The quick frenzy now over, he stood above the remains for a moment, panting slightly. The entire front half of his body was soaked in blood.

* * *

Naru's head popped up at the first sight of movement from the trees. The figures of Motoko and Keitaro were clear even in the low light, and she could also see the dark stain that covered most of what she could see of Keitaro. Given the circumstances, it wasn't hard for to guess what had happened. They found a small stream where Keitaro cleaned himself up a bit.

"You two head straight back home. I'll meet you there later," he said as he finished wiping the better part of the blood off himself, then put on a spare shirt from his backpack.

Noting the looks he got, he said as he stood up slowly, "There could be more of them. It's me they are after, not you. If there are more, I don't want them following me back to Hinata. I will go to my Den. Chances are, this incursion has to do with much more than me, and they've probably already been calling for me anyway."

Naru seemed to absorb this, and said with a steadfast but concerned look, "Don't be too long, OK? And ... be careful."

Keitaro smiled weakly at her and winked, then silently turned around and headed off in the opposite direction of the way they had all come to this spot.

Naru and Motoko stood and watched him until he vanished from their view, then walked away together in silence.


	23. The Den

Neither Naru nor Motoko had had much to say on their trip home, as they had both been lost in their own thoughts. Naru in particular might not have even noticed had Motoko tried to converse. Although she was calm and composed, her thoughts raced so furiously through her head that she didn't so much as twitch at any of the few loud noises or other such potential distractions that are inevitable when riding a train. She was feeling the surge of apprehension that one feels when a long-anticipated but seldom thought-about unpleasantry suddenly and unexpectedly springs itself out of rumor and into reality. The warnings that Keitaro had given when he had first come home about the possibility of being called away to fight in some battle between native werewolves and foreign vampires had sounded almost fantastical even against everything that she had seen with her own eyes at that point, and as the months of idyllic existence had turned into years she had all but forgotten Keitaro's words. She did not fear for the immediate future - she doubted that Keitaro would be caught off guard again now that he knew there was threat, and she had no doubt that Keitaro would be quite safe once in the company of the rest of his Den _(as Keitaro had privately told her more about the Den and the collective strength thereof than he probably should have)_ from any other vampires who might be trailing him. No, she was much more worried about the days and weeks to follow. Keitaro's words and demeanor before they had gone their separate ways, when matched with bits and pieces of information that she had gleamed from him prior regarding the foreign vampire situation that now popped up at the forefront of her mind, had made it pretty clear that he knew, or at least believed, that his own attack was only a piece of a much larger puzzle.

Motoko's mind, on the other hand, was now blank. Her thoughts had been scrambled too by the time they had first boarded the train, but once seated she had soothed her nerves by meditating. She shared all of Naru's concerns, of course, plus she had a rather embarrassing bruise around her neck where the vampire had gripped her, something that she was not looking forward to explaining to the rest of the Hinata residents. Indeed, she was not looking forward to explaining anything about what had happened tonight to the rest of the Hinata residents. These past two years had been absolutely wonderful for everyone and even Motoko herself had grown rather placidly accustomed to the peaceful and happy existence. She could easily imagine how the news that Keitaro's ill-received prophecy might actually be coming true would go down - not very well. She was not excited at being the bearer of this news.

The train plowed steadily towards Hinata, and neither Naru nor Motoko said a word to one another until they had actually gotten back home, when they rather blandly bid one another a good night.

* * *

Keitaro could not help but chuckle out loud a little as he searched the corpses of the vampires. He had walked away from Naru and Motoko to facilitate them leaving, but after about half an hour when he was quite sure that they were gone, he had come back to the scene of the battle. For all the arrogance they had displayed, the vampires had still had the poor grace to make sure that they carried nothing on their persons that would be of any use to him in figuring out who they were or what their ultimate goals had been beyond simply capturing him, should they somehow end up failing. They were obviously foreigners, but Keitaro could have guessed that easily enough. Pocketing the useful sum of cash that they had been carrying as well as slipping into his bag the nice combat knife that the sniper vampire had been wearing, he buried the remainder of the vampires' silver ammunition but left the rifle to for some lucky hiker to find one day ... lucky so long as they didn't mind scavenging around two dismembered corpses.

Heightening his senses, he headed off in the direction of the train station himself. He had a bit of a trip ahead of him. The Den owned one of the small, otherwise uninhabited islands to the south of the main Japanese islands. It was the perfect place for their center of operations, because it was well off the beaten track and easy to track anyone or anything coming to or going from it. It was technically owned and operated by Keitaro's Den, but it was the unofficial headquarters of all the Japanese Dens, and in major events like this that were likely to involve more than one Den, it was always the place where the various Den leaders would meet. As it was posted as private property, it also gave them good privacy - the few humans who had landed there anyway had been aggressively prosecuted for trespassing, giving the island a reputation among boaters as a place to avoid. Keitaro could take the train only as far as a small town near the southern tip of Kyushu that was about an hour's walk from a simple wooden pier led about 40 feet out into the water. From there it was another good 3 hour motorboat ride to the island itself. There was sometimes a member of the Den with a car hanging out at the train station to give rides to anyone on their way back to the island, but this was just something that a small group of friends did on their own time and none of them were likely to be sitting idly at the train station at the hour that Keitaro would get there. However, there were always at least 3 Lycans and 2 boats at the dock. But then, before any of that mattered, he still had a hike of several hours just to get to the train station and then a long train ride.

* * *

The next morning both Naru and Motoko were sorely regretting that they had not thought to discuss between each other exactly what they were going to tell everyone else about why they had come home in the middle of last night a day earlier than they had said they would, and without Keitaro to boot. They had both gotten home pretty late and so slept in and missed breakfast, but as they wandered out of their rooms later in the morning they realized their mistake too late. Motoko had run into Shinobu first, who was still milling about the kitchen, and Shinobu had done a triple-take; the second being for the surprise of seeing Motoko at all on this day, and the third being a wide-eyed stare as she noticed the ugly and clearly hand-shaped bruise around Motoko's neck.

"Mo ... Motoko? Are you alright?" The younger girl stammered.

Motoko blushed slightly at the question. It had been a long time since she'd worn such an obvious sign of being physically bested. Her ego wasn't as fragile as it used to be, but she was still pretty self-conscious about it.

"Yeah, I'm fine," replied Motoko, doing her best to sound convincing. "we swung by Tsuruko's place on our way out. A little sparring accident, that's all."

Shinobu seemed to accept that explanation without too much hesitation. Now Motoko just hoped that she could clarify that particular detail of their trip with Naru before she said something to contradict it. She was not entirely comfortable with lying to the others, especially since it would soon enough be obvious that something was off when it was noticed that Keitaro wasn't with them anymore, but she didn't want to send up the red flags until it was certain that there was reason to do so - Motoko kept the hope, although not really the expectation, that whatever last night was about had been taken care of between Keitaro and herself when they had killed the assailants.

* * *

Keitaro, on the other hand, had not gotten much sleep at all. He'd had a much longer trip 'home' than had his friends, and also unlike his friends he'd had some immediate demands of his time awaiting him when he got there. The sun had risen before he'd even arrived at the Den and he'd logged no more than 2 or 3 hours of sleep before the last of those who were expected had arrived or been otherwise accounted for and he'd been sent for.

* * *

Keitaro looked around the auditorium and even in his slightly groggy state could not help but be impressed by the sheer number of Lycans that had assembled here. Easily hundreds. Possibly a thousand or more. It had to have been half the Lycan population of Japan. From where he was seated in a small conference room overlooking the rest of the auditorium, he couldn't even see the entire sprawl below him. There was relatively little structure visible above ground on this island, but the underground facilities were of much grander size. But he didn't let himself think about that for too long. Right now in the conference room, the last of several dozen elders and leaders from all five Japanese Dens who were just taking their seats around the table, were the more important objects of attention. Keitaro himself, as the third ranking member of his den, was seated to the left of the leader of his Den, the largest of the five. His name was Rikyo Iwasaki.

"I'm glad you all could make it," Rikyo began as he nodded to the members from the other Dens. "I haven't seen some of you in a very long time. I regret that it is under unfortunate circumstances such as these that we meet again."

His words met with respectful nods from the other Lycan leaders. After a moment of pause, Rikyo continued.

"I think you all know the gist of things, but for the record, here's the rundown: Last night there was a series of coordinated and obviously well-planned attacks on pretty much everyone in this room who was not here or at another stronghold. For those of you who are noting absent friends, I'm afraid a couple of those attacks were successful. Two of our number were taken by the vampires, both alive so far as we know. Considering the number of attacks, I suppose we came off rather well, and neither of our missing know enough about affairs outside their own Dens for that information to be too great a threat in enemy hands. Nevertheless, we mourn for our friends and lament this interruption of our peaceful existence. Rest assured, neither offence will go unanswered."

More firm nods and grumbles of agreement met these words.

"However, there is a distinction that the rest of you might not know that is very important. About an hour before I heard from the first of you last night, I received a communication from Tokyo. From a one Gennai Miyahara."

This drew raised eyebrows from everyone in the room. Even Keitaro knew that name. Unlike the Lycan community with its separate, independent and loosely tied Dens, the Japanese vampires were governed by a single ruling body with its headquarters in downtown Tokyo. Gennai was the eldest vampire in all of Japan. Rikyo was one of very few Lycans to have dealt with Gennai personally. Despite the lack of conflict, local Lycans and vampires almost never interacted at all. Only the older members of either race had any connections with the other. Rikyo seldom even mentioned Gennai, but rumor had it that he and Gennai were friends. Certainly no one inquired what Rikyo was doing or where he was going when he took time to himself, and if anyone knew that he spent time with Gennai, they kept it to themselves.

"Obviously it came too late to make a difference, but Gennai tried to warn me. Apparently some of his people were also attacked at that same time. He knew that the attackers were vampires and ventured a guess that we might also be hit. He also wanted to assure me that neither he nor any vampires under his rule had anything to do with it, lest we blame him."

None of the other Lycan leaders seemed to dispute that too much, although it did spark a few minutes of debate among them.

"Anyway, Gennai has promised full cooperation in the investigation and response to these attacks, and I have promised him the same. Thus, tomorrow we will be sending a expeditionary team to Tokyo to work with Gennai's vampires, and they are sending their own team here to work with us. Eizo, you will assemble and lead our expeditionary team."

A man slightly larger than Keitaro, a Lycan from another Den, stood up and bowed. "Yes sir," he said.

"Keitaro, you will take charge of the team working with Gennai's people."

Keitaro started inwardly, but answered steadily anyway. "Yes sir," he said, standing up and bowing.

"They will arrive here at sundown tomorrow. Have your team assembled and ready by then. Any questions, either of you?" Rikyo asked, referring to both Keitaro and Eizo.

"No sir," they replied together.

"The rest of you are to consolidate your forces and be prepared to counter any further incursions. I expect you all to keep in constant touch with me and with each other, I don't want any more nasty surprises. Understood?"

Nods all around the table.

"OK then, that's enough talking. Eizo, Keitaro, you two stay here for a moment, everyone else is dismissed."

All but the two named stood up, bowed, and left the room. When the door closed behind them, Rikyo spoke again.

"I'm sure I don't have to tell you how important it is that the two of you succeed. If whomever is behind these attacks feels strong enough to take on us and Gennai at the same time, then cooperation between our two species is critical. We've worked together before, but not for a long time, and never before on something of this scope. There is no certainly no bad blood between them and us, so you're working from an open slate. Nevertheless, it is the two of you who will set the precedent for Lycan/vampire relations throughout all of Japan for a long time to come. Eizo, I've spoken to both your elders and your subordinates and they all tell me that you're nothing if not versatile, adaptable and quick at thinking on your feet. Those are just the attributes you'll need to live and work among vampires, even friendly ones. That's why I chose you for this assignment."

"Thank you sir. I am honored by your compliments, I won't let you down," replied Eizo, bowing his head.

"And Keitaro ... I'm sure I don't have to tell you why I chose you to for your job, do I?"

"No sir," replied Keitaro, who also bowed his head with a smile and a short chuckle. It was standard practice in his Den for newly turned Lycans to be introduced to Rikyo after they'd cracked open the kernels of memory from the one who had bitten them. When Rikyo first met Keitaro, knowing who had turned him, he had been intrigued. At first it was more because Shinichi had been his friend and he was anxious that Keitaro should tap into his memories and abilities and honor Shinichi's line, but Rikyo had quickly taken a liking to Keitaro himself, and as such, Rikyo was the only other Lycan whom Keitaro had felt comfortable enough with to tell all about the Hinata Apartments, his friends, and Naru. More importantly, in this case, was the fact that Keitaro had also told him all about how he ended up there with those people, and the whole long story of that first day until the present.

"Now, you two in particular must deliver flawless communication. You are the tip of the spear. The teams you lead may be small in number, but it is the information that you acquire that will determine the orders I give that will affect every Lycan in Japan, the orders that Gennai gives that will affect every Japanese vampire. I want the two of you to report to each other, me, and Gennai on a very regular basis. Understood?"

"Yes sir," was the simultaneous reply from Keitaro and Eizo, as the two looked at each other. Rikyo recognized something in both of their expressions and laughed softly.

"I'm sorry. When I'm trying to take on the whole picture at once I've been known to forget some of the smaller details. Eizo ... Hyata isn't it? This is Keitaro Urashima. He is a descendant of the Katsumoto line. He's only been with us for a few years, but especially considering the circumstances by which he became a Lycan in the first place, he has developed the famous Katsumoto abilities extraordinarily well, as well as adding his own attributes. It is actually for those in particular that I chose him for his assignment. Patience, hospitality, and an absolutely uncanny ability to grow on people. Perfect for the one to host our guests," he said with a wink. "And Keitaro, this is Eizo Hyata. Technically he isn't even a ranking officer within his Den, but his abilities that I mentioned earlier are so superior that the leaders of his Den have granted him de facto officership in this case."

Eizo stood up again and offered his hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Keitaro Urashima. I've heard of your predecessor and his ... now your ... reputation precedes you."

Keitaro returned the handshake. "Likewise. I look forward to working with you."

Rikyo nodded and smiled. "Alright, the two of you should probably get started with your preparations. Keitaro, Gennai's team consists of 15 people, so I want you to select 14 teammates for yourself. You may choose from anyone who is here today, irrespective of their Den. I know you've never met most of them, but talk to the people you do know and have them help you. Eizo, you can recruit between one and two dozen teammates. You leave first thing in the morning. Hop to it, guys."

"Yes sir," Keitaro and Eizo again said together, and stood up. Trailing just behind Eizo, Keitaro hung back a moment just outside the door after Eizo had left the room and walked down the hall.

"What's on your mind, Keitaro?" Came Rikyo's voice.

Keitaro smiled and stepped back into the room. "All of a sudden I'm feeling kind of guilty. I've hardly spent any time here these past couple years and you go and entrust me to an assignment like this? Some of these guys around have hardly taken a vacation in centuries, much less spent most of their Lycan years living their former human lives. I feel sort of unworthy."

Rikyo walked over to Keitaro and put his hand on his shoulder. "You did not make the choice to become a Lycan, it was a situation that was dropped on your head. Only a handful of Lycans in Japan were turned against their will. You know how that system is supposed to work."

Keitaro nodded.

"Had Katsumoto not been so important, we may well have left you alone entirely, but his knowledge and skills were too valuable to our Den, we had to bring you here. However short the time you've actually spent here may be, you have never failed to do everything that we've asked of you, and I myself would have been hard pressed to do those things better than you did. You may lead an unconventional life by our norms, but then your situation was unconventional from the start. In any case, what service you have given has been exemplary and I have absolute faith in you. Shinichi would be proud of the treatment you've given his name ... and he'd probably apologize for forcing you to do so the way he did."

Keitaro smiled resolutely and put his hand on Rikyo's shoulder. "Thank you sir, for everything you've done for me. I owe you a lot. I won't let you down."

"I know you won't. Now you'd better get down there and start putting together your team. You don't want Eizo to get _all _the best people, do you?"

Keitaro chuckled lightly. "No I don't."

* * *

By ironic coincidence, the two names that kept coming up when Keitaro was asking around for skilled trackers turned out to be none other than the two Lycans who had been sent to track down Keitaro just before his first transformation. Keitaro had not run into either of them since the day they brought him to the Den, and he had approached them rather sheepishly when he asked them to join his team. Fortunately, both of them had handled several similar assignments to retrieving Keitaro before, and so were used to meeting violent resistance. They both apologized to Keitaro for threatening his human friends, but explained that he had left them little choice in the matter. Keitaro was still a little put off by the way in which they seemed to regard his friends as insignificant objects, but he did appreciate the apology and he did have to concede the point that had he not resisted, those threats would not have been necessary. The three of them decided to consider the matter closed. With their help, Keitaro did not take too long to put together the rest of his team. He had plenty of time to get a good night's sleep.

* * *

The next morning, Keitaro and his team were at the dock to bid good luck to Eizo's group. Once the expeditionary team was on it's way, Keitaro sent his teammates off to make sure that they too were ready and then to take the rest of the day off until the vampire team arrived. As both he and his team were racked with anticipation and a little anxiety, it seemed like on of the longest afternoons in Keitaro's life. Sundown did come, however, and half of Keitaro's team was already waiting at the dock when Keitaro himself went to wait there in the late afternoon. The last of his team showed up just as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. Just minutes later, two of the Den's boats came into view, speeding towards the island at top speed.

For all his mental preparation, the knot in Keitaro's stomach almost felt like it might twist his lunch right out as he watched 4 members of his Den lead the 15 figures up the dock way. Only after he'd watched the boats pull up and lash up to the dock did the weight of the responsibility that Rikyo had placed upon him really start to make itself felt. Suddenly Keitaro felt very much like he did the first time he went before all the residents of the Hinata apartments. Nevertheless, he forced himself to stand tall.

* * *

As they had been traveling by daylight, all 15 of the vampires wore hooded cloaks. This was understandable, but it didn't exactly set the most comfortable of moods that no one could see their faces. Keitaro didn't want the awkwardness of the situation to last any longer than it had to.

"Thank you very much for coming, friends. Welcome to our home. Please, let us go inside."

The apparent leader of the vampire team spoke. "Thank you for having us. I regret that it is under these circumstances that we come," a soft male voice said.

Once inside, the vampires took off their hoods. Keitaro addressed the one who had spoken earlier. He was just shorter than Keitaro, and his expression was curiously unreadable.

"My name is Keitaro Urashima, and I'm the descendant of Shinichi Katsumoto. It is my pleasure to host you at our Den and to serve along side you in this time of crisis."

"Before I return the introduction, I must apologize for the deception. I rarely travel out of disguise, it makes me harder to follow. Old habit, I'm afraid."

It was not the vampire's words that caused Keitaro and his team to visibly start. It was the voice that said it. This young man now spoke with a soft female voice. Not missing a beat, 'he' raised his right hand to his face and began to peel off what was quickly clear to be a latex mask. With 'his' left hand, 'he' then pulled off the wig that complimented the mask. Keitaro now looked upon the face of a beautiful young woman. An oddly familiar young woman.

"Hello Keitaro. Long time," she said, her voice obviously carrying uncertainly but otherwise still unreadable.

Her voice saying his name made the connection in Keitaro's memory.

"_Kanako?"_


	24. Responding in Kind

After the formalities had been done, Keitaro and Kanako had gone for a walk along the shore of the island after Keitaro had asked his second in command to ensure that all of Kanako's equipment was unloaded. The rest of Keitaro's group had taken Kanako's team downstairs and shown them to their quarters. The fact that Keitaro and Kanako knew each other and had the same last name caused many raised eyebrows and, afterwards, a few muffled conversations. However strange it seemed though, no one could think of a reason to find a problem with it.

* * *

Most of the leaders from the other Dens who had assembled the previous night had returned to their own strongholds along with most of their troops throughout the day as they received their final briefings and orders. Rikyo had also released most of his people to go about their business, but nearly half of his Den lived on the island anyway and were all too pleased to stay behind and ensure that their home remained secure. Thus, Keitaro and Kanako did not exactly have total privacy, and it was inevitable that Kanako tended to turn heads as they walked, but neither of them could have expected otherwise.

* * *

"I'm sorry for not keeping in better touch all these years, Kanako. I suppose I haven't been a very good brother," said Keitaro.

"Don't say that, Keitaro. You wouldn't have been able to reach me even had you tried. I'm the one who should have contacted you, I knew where you were. I should be apologizing to you."

Keitaro sighed inwardly and decided not to pursue this line of thought. "Well in either case, it's good too see you again. You're looking good."

"As are you."

A few moments of awkward silence passed.

"How's Aunt Haruka doing?" Asked Kanako.

"Better than ever if you ask me."

"Did she end up staying with that guy ... Sanzo? Was that his name?"

"Seta? Well, they had been reduced to casual and infrequently tapped friendship shortly before you left home, but the events beginning with my own rude introduction into the world of immortals have helped bring them back together. They're inseparable nowadays. It's done Haruka a lot of good."

"That's nice to hear."

Keitaro could not help but smirk lightly. "Seeing you as a vampire, I was surprised. Hearing you express interest in Haruka, now that's just too crazy to believe," he said with a nudge to her arm.

"Just because we didn't always get along too well doesn't mean that I hated her," Kanako replied softly. "The main reason we didn't get along is because we are both stubborn as mules and sometimes just about as amiable. I understand that now. But I know that she's a good person. I have never thought otherwise of her. And after dealing with some of the people that I've had to deal with in this new life of mine, my appreciation for Haruka's underlying well-meaning is greater still."

"I'm glad to hear that. I myself have been given a new level of appreciation for her during these past few years."

Another short bout of silence.

"You know, before we get too involved in our mission, I have to swing back by my place to pick up a few things. If you'd care to come along, you can see her again. I think you'll find that she's changed worlds since you last saw her. And there are some other people I'd like to introduce you to as well," Keitaro said.

Kanako seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then accepted his offer. "Sure. I'll go with you."

* * *

It was, however, 4 more days before Keitaro and Kanako and their team were ready to move out. They poured over what information had been captured from the dozens of failed kidnap attempts and were able to put enough pieces together to trace the point of origin for at least one of the would-have-been kidnappers. It was the final piece of proof if any was needed that this was not the work of Gennai's vampires - he had flown to Japan from Moscow. More importantly, after tracing this vampire to Moscow and then retracing his steps after arriving in Japan, they were able to narrow down a relatively small area about 10 miles outside Tokyo city limits as the most likely location of the headquarters for the foreign vampires, or at least their staging area - several other tidbits of information supported this, as did some information from Eizo. Gennai was quite chagrined to find out that all this trouble had probably been centered within a short drive from his own headquarters all the while. Keitaro and Kanako's team members all performed as advertised - they quickly demonstrated excellent cooperation, and by the end of the second day the spectacle of the vampiric presence within the Den ceased to be a spectacle as even the most skeptical of Lycans could not help but respect their professionalism and proficiency, particularly when working in an unfamiliar environment. Nevertheless, after those four days of seeing hardly anything other than computers, telephones, photographs and paper files, everyone on the team was quite happy to be continuing the investigation in the field.

The plan of action was to join up with their sister team in Tokyo, split up and sweep the neighborhood pinpointed by their research to locate the suspected headquarters, then regroup and attack in force the next night. The primary objectives were to kill or capture any foreign vampires that were found and, of equal or greater importance, gather information about their enemy - who they are, what their plans are, and how they plan to go about executing them. Kanako declared that it should be considered part of the primary objective to capture at least a handful of prisoners so that they might be interrogated.

Selecting their weapons and other equipment and making final rendezvous arrangements with Eizo's team in the wee morning hours of the fifth day, the team retired for some much needed rest as the first rays of sunlight beamed across the island.

* * *

They left the island about two hours before sundown. Kanako's vampires donned their sunproof cloaks as they helped load the boats that were to take them directly to Nagasaki, where a small plane that they had chartered would be waiting to rush them to Tokyo, where in turn a half-dozen large SUVs owed by Gennai awaited them. Nagasaki added an hour or two to the boat trip, but the plane would save them many more hours over taking the train all the way to Tokyo, and would leave plenty of night for the initial scouting mission. Keitaro had to give up his idea of picking up his armor before the reconnaissance mission, but it wasn't until the strike part of the operation that he was likely to need it anyway, and waiting until morning would allow Kanako and himself more time to spend at the Hinata Apartments anyway. The Den's issue armor was much less comprehensive than Suu's design, but still afforded good protection. When they arrived in Tokyo it had only been completely dark for less than an hour, and they arrived at the rendezvous point right on time. Eizo's group pulled into the parking lot of the small warehouse before the last of Keitaro and Kanako's people had even gotten out of the cars.

Eizo's troop totaled 18 Lycans including himself, plus 15 vampires. Keitaro and Kanako greeted their counterparts, which was duly returned, and they all piled into the warehouse. The Lycan Den that encompassed Tokyo had few assets actually within the city, so the meeting place had been provided by Gennai. The two teams wasted no time breaking out the maps of the target area. 10 teams of 5 were settled upon for the actual hunt, with the remaining 13 staying at the warehouse to act as the home base who would coordinate the search and where the scouting groups would report in. Keitaro had suggested that either Kanako or himself should stay behind with the warehouse group so that a person in charge could be easily reached at any time during the night, but the idea was shot down both by Kanako, who said that there was no way in hell she was going to sit this out, and by Keitaro's immediate colleagues, who said that his skills would be much better utilized on the street than in sitting by the telephone. Also at Kanako's insistence, and by that time Keitaro had already given up the idea of arguing with her, she and Keitaro would be on the same team. 'I want to see what you're made of,' had been her words, delivered with a friendly but challenging glare and grin, which Keitaro decided to interpret as 'I want to get a feel for working with you.'

* * *

Several hours later, with only a few more hours until sunrise, Keitaro climbed back into the car and closed the door behind him with a sign. Putting his hand on his forehead, he looked over at Kanako, who had just taken the driver's seat. Taking out his radio and unplugging the earpiece and clip-on microphone, he said directly into the mike, "Credit Card to Crazy Shoppers, anyone found a sale yet? Over."

"Negative." "Negative." "Nothing yet, over." "Negative." "Negative contact sir, over" "Not a one, over" "Negative." "Negative sir" "Negative." Came the sequenced replies.

Keitaro sighed again, and turned around in his seat so that he was addressing his entire team. "I think these invaders set up shop at the very back of this district on purpose, just to piss us off should we come looking for them," he said.

"It'll just make kicking their asses all over the place that much more satisfying," said one of the Lycans in the back seat. This drew a thin smile both from the second Lycan and the vampire who made up the rest of the passengers.

Keitaro returned their smile. "Good way of looking at it."

Kanako was the last to smile, but did so after Keitaro spoke. "There's only a few more grids left to search, and since we're all converging on them, we should have ourselves a date for tomorrow night with plenty of time to spare."

Nods all around.

"Alright guys, let's wrap this up," said Keitaro. Kanako started up the car and they headed to their last assigned grid, where two other teams were also scheduled to wind up their searches.

* * *

A short while later, they arrived at their destination. Although there were two other teams due to sweep this particular grid, they were all coming from different directions and as such the three teams would only meet as they finished the sweep. At the start they were all still on their own. Kanako parked their vehicle behind a small, closed store and the all filed out. Standing side by side with Keitaro, Kanako adjusted the swivel strap of the assault carbine that she wore under her cloak. The two of them faced their three teammates as they all exchanged glances.

"Everyone ready?" Asked Keitaro, as he too adjusted the strap of his assault carbine.

Light nods from the rest of the team. Then, without another word, they started walking down the sidewalk.

About an hour later, they had met up with both of the other teams in this grid, and had only another couple of blocks to search. They had found nothing.

"I am starting to get this dreadful feeling that we fucked up somehow and that we've wasted this whole night chasing ghosts," sighed the designated leader, a vampire, of one of the teams that Keitaro and Kanako had met up with.

"Well, it's not over until it's over. Perhaps another group will have better luck," said Keitaro.

"They probably moved their base knowing that we'd be onto them after they botched their kidnap attempts so miserably. After all, it's been the better part of a week now," this was a Lycan from the third team.

"Maybe, maybe not. In either case, it's our job to find out," replied Keitaro. "Whichever way it goes tonight, sooner or later we'll catch up to them if we stay on top of things."

No one else had any comments, and so they continued searching in silence for another 20 minutes or so, until a frantic communication came through on their radios. "Attention all Shoppers! This is Crazy Shopper 9! Super sale going on right now in Isle 22, over! Hundreds of items on closeout right now! Hurry!"

* * *

It took less than half an hour for all the other teams to arrive on the scene in Grid 22. Running at full bore, it had not taken long for the mixed groups of vampires and Lycans to get back to their transportation. Although the grids they were in by then were primarily commercial and industrial and thus almost entirely deserted at this hour, any humans who did happen to be around would spend the next several days repeating the image of seemingly ordinary people running down the street faster than they usually saw cars moving in this area in their minds, wondering exactly what it was they had eaten recently to create such an illusion.

"Holy shit ladies and gentlemen, talk about the jackpot," Kanako whispered quietly into the clip-on microphone of her radio, as she looked down through a small hole she had cut in the roof of the small warehouse that was the object of their night-long hunt. She, Keitaro, Eizo and his vampire counterpart had slipped past the sentries and managed to get up on the roof without being seen. Below them, a small army of the foreign vampires, numbering several hundred at least, were clearly preparing a strike of their own. It appeared that this location was a staging area, as opposed to a headquarters, because it was loaded with crates full of weapons, ammunition, armor, and other battle equipment, and there were no obvious quarters or anything like that. Many of these crates now lay opened and the vampires below were laying out piles of these items. Aside from the sentries, relatively few of the vampires appeared to be armed at this point, although that was clearly a situation that was not likely to last. Carefully and silently retracing their path, the four escaped the roof again without being caught.

"Hit them now? You've gotta be shittin' me! Tonight was just supposed to be search, tomorrow destroy! We're totally unprepared and unequipped for this kind of assault!" Hissed one of the other team leaders, a Lycan.

"You're right. We did not bring full assault equipment with us tonight. We have relatively light weapons and a modest supply of ammunition. However, we have three other things that I feel justify a little impromptu action on our part," Kanako explained calmly as she, Keitaro, and the other two senior officers proposed the change in plans to the rest of the troop. "One - the element of surprise. We have not been detected yet, and the light security they have in place indicates that they are relying more on themselves not being detected than anything else right now. Two - opportunity. Said light security and temporary vulnerability of the enemy mean that this is a prime opportunity to attack. Three - necessity. They are clearly planning a major strike, probably a daylight strike in just a few hours as a daylight raid by vampires would obviously not be expected. We don't know who or where they plan to hit, so Gennai and Rikyo could not realistically mount a defense at all their respective strongholds powerfully enough to repel an attack of this magnitude. Whatever their target may be will likely be lost to us, and whatever defenders are at the site will be lost as well. We can potentially halt this attack by counterattacking right now. Even if we fail, we can at least expect to inflict enough damage upon their force to allow our troops back home a better chance of mounting a successful defense. Agreed?"

A moment's thought on her words drew nods and looks of uncertainty but resolve from the others.

"I understand what you must be thinking and I agree that such a rash move would be inadvisable under most any other circumstances," threw in Keitaro. "However, as Kanako said, we have the chance here to save a great many lives of our friends and allies if we are successful here tonight. Every one of you possesses great ability, that's why you're on this team in the first place. I believe we can do this."

More enthusiastic motions of agreement this time.

Eizo's vampire nodded to him, and Eizo passed him a small notebook. Flipping it open and reading it for a moment, the vampire said, "Alright, we've got about 180 rounds per person for the carbines and about 75 rounds each for the pistols. Set your fire selectors for single shot or three round burst." Flipping a few more pages, he continued. "OK, we've got two satchel charges and a dozen hand grenades. That helps." He engaged in some quick but intensive contemplating, and came up with a battle plan. "Here's what I suggest; three of us will get back on the roof, two with one satchel charge each and the third with the grenades. Maybe one extra person for cover. You'll approach from the side where the ammo stash is. They will take position in the center of the roof. Keitaro, you did a pretty sparkling job of getting up there once, may I nominate you to take part in that phase?"

"Yes," Keitaro replied firmly.

"Good. You should avoid taking out the sentries on that side if at all possible, or you'll shorten your window of opportunity down to something real small indeed. Now Kanako, you mentioned that there appeared to be a good stack of munitions piled up against the opposite wall over there?"

"That's correct."

"A dozen or so of us will take position on that side of the building. Once Keitaro and his team are up on the roof, that dozen will fire on the sentries on that side of the building with full-auto fire. The idea there is to make as big a show as possible with the ultimate goal of drawing as many of those vampires to that side of the building as possible."

The rest of the plan began to come clear to the team as he continued. "Keitaro, the second the firing starts you and your team must cut holes in the roof large enough for you to toss in the bombs. The gunfire should mask the noise you make but you must nevertheless move quickly. You will toss at least one satchel charge onto that pile of ammo and drop the rest of the bombs where ever looks best. Get the picture?"

Keitaro nodded.

"The exploding crates of munitions should clear out that side of the building pretty well. The rest of us will attack from the front and rear of the building so as to trap whoever's left against the other wall. Watch your crossfire and check your targets. Now, by that time the red herring team will probably be near out of ammunition. Therefore our best melee fighters should be in that group. Kanako, you seem like the natural choice to lead that team."

Kanako smiled lightly and nodded. Keitaro didn't shift his gaze and so Kanako didn't notice his cocked eyebrow.

"Eizo and I will each lead one of the teams attacking from in front and behind. Eizo, the most important thing for our groups to keep in mind is to avoid friendly fire. Kanako's group will likely be in the middle of things by then, and the roof might not be such a good place to be once that wall is gone, so Keitaro and company will probably be in there too. We must be sure of who we're shooting before we shoot them. Right?"

"Right," replied Eizo.

"Everyone game?"

No dissent.

"Good. Then let's get into our teams and be quick about it."

As they parted, Kanako smiled wryly and whispered to Keitaro, "Atsumori here probably didn't mention during introductions that he is one of Gennai's personal favorite tacticians."

* * *

Forming the teams took little time. Everyone in the entire group knew what they were best at, and where they overlapped when one team already had it's designated head count, whomever had gotten to the team leaders' side first stayed and the runner up joined another team.

Keitaro's spiraling motion with his finger followed by a throwing motion in the direction of the warehouse signaled his 3 teammates to haul ass for the wall. No sooner than the sentry's field of vision passed just beyond their position did Keitaro and his team cross the distance in a blink of an eye and take cover behind a stack of empty pallets. Staying perfectly silent and still for a few moments to listen for any sign that they'd been noticed, they heard none. Keitaro used a small mirror, blued slightly against position-betraying reflection, to peek around the edges of the pallet stack. There were only a handful of sentries, probably another mechanism designed to attract less attention, but nevertheless their visual coverage of the site was excellent. Evading them long enough to make it to the side of the building was one thing. To somehow do so long enough to scale the wall was seeming a much more difficult proposition now that they were in close than it had when watching from a distance.

* * *

A good 10 minutes passed until Keitaro saw a break in the sentries' gaze. It was a hair-raising moment for him, his immediate teammates and his companions watching from their respective positions as the four of them zipped up the wall. However, fast and well-timed though their move was, it wasn't quite good enough. The four climbers didn't see it, but everyone else could clearly see the sentry's reaction as the infiltrators were spotted just a second or so from the top.

Kanako, watching keenly, didn't miss a beat. Sharply depressing her trigger, she launched a 3 round burst squarely at the sentry's head. The sentry had only managed to raise his own weapon to about half the height of the wall before he was cut down. The team's weapons were loaded with armor-piercing incendiary bullets, which with a sufficient volume of vital hits were capable of killing either a vampire or a Lycan, but even a couple of such hits would usually disable or weaken either species long enough to be a relatively easy target for finishing off by tooth, claw or blade. In this case though, the main goal was to stop the sentry from shooting Keitaro's company off of the wall before they cleared the top, and however long this particular vampire may or may not have stayed down after that wasn't particularly relevant. This objective was cleanly achieved as one of the bullets seared through his windpipe and the other two nearly took a goodly chunk of his skull right off of his head. Keitaro and his team were over the top and in position before the sentry hit the ground.

The burst of gunfire was naturally raised enough alarm for several vampires from inside the warehouse to look out the window and see the sentry twitching on the ground, but this had bought Keitaro all the time he needed. The sound of Kanako's team opening up their barrage prompted Keitaro's team to jam their knives through the metal roof. The metal was thick, and even with their strength it became something akin to opening a giant can. As those vampires who had already picked up weapons began to spill out the front and back of the warehouse to meet this threat, they, Eizo and Atsumori's teams added to the chorus of gunfire. This and shouts from within the building covered the noise Keitaro and company made quite well, but as expected, by the time they had cut completely through and removed roughly a 3x3 foot square plug from the roof, Kanako was slamming in her last carbine magazine.

Looking down through the hole, Keitaro dropped his satchel charge onto the ammunition crates, and his teammates dropped their bombs amongst the mobs of vampires scrambling to arm themselves from the piles of weapons they'd laid out. Naturally this was noticed even among the chaos that was quickly developing inside, but with the bombs set on short fuse, they had no time to respond before they exploded.

* * *

Everyone found themselves shielding their eyes from the sudden flash. There must have been more explosives in the crates that they had presumed, for the already formidable explosive power of the satchel charge was magnified tenfold. A good two-thirds of the wall on that side disintegrated and the roof buckled, splitting down the middle of the gaping hole in the wall and collapsing inward, effectively splitting the remaining defenders into two groups and sending Keitaro and his team crashing to the ground in what up until a moment before would have been inside the warehouse.

Scores of the foreign vampires and been disintegrated right along with the wall and many more were reduced to one degree or another by flame and shrapnel, but there had been hundreds to begin with, and they still outnumbered their attackers. In the chaos Keitaro and his people might have gone unnoticed for a moment, but they recovered from their fall quickly, and not waiting to lose the initiative, took cover behind debris and opened fire with their own weapons. Most of the foreign vampires who were not obliterated in the explosion were neatly trapped between the two pockets created by the collapsed roof and Eizo and Atsumori's attacks, but there were still nearly two dozen facing Keitaro and his 3 companions.

* * *

Kanako saw her chance when Keitaro opened fire from the inside and split the attentions of the remaining foreign vampires. She and her team leapt forward and hit their enemy head on. Most of them were out of pistol bullets at that point, and Kanako was one of those, but the speed at which they struck combined with the fact that Keitaro's group was still managing to hold the attention of the lesser armed defenders meant that the outermost vampires only managed to get off a few shots at Kanako before they were overrun.

Hardly feeling the impact of the bullets through the trauma plates of her armor, Kanako was unaware of the fact that she was smiling as she reached behind her cloak for her favorite weapon. As she rounded on the first vampire to have shot her, the flash of his last shot hid the movement that severed his arms at the elbows. He didn't have to suffer for long, for the next blur of motion saw his head similarly disconnected from the rest of his body. Kanako held high in her right hand on the follow-through side of the still standing corpse a jet black naginata blade, 15 inches in length, with another 15 inches of soda can-thick handle behind it. As her eyes, which were now radiant blue in color, swept the 3 other vampires standing just behind this one, she opened her mouth slightly and ran her tongue across her now elongated fangs in a gesture that might have almost seemed erotic under different circumstances and had any of the witnesses to it lived long enough to ponder it. Before she'd even completed the gesture, her index finger pressed a small button on the handle of her weapon and 6 more sections of handle shot out from the bottom, narrowing slightly with each segment and ending in a sharp tip on the opposite end of the blade, so that the weapon was now taller than she was. Inside of the same second, she swung the her weapon powerfully as her seductive gesture changed equally quickly into one of primal ferocity and cut all 3 opposing vampires in half at the midsection with a single stroke. The entire encounter, including Kanako's artistic moment, took just under 3 seconds.

Keitaro almost fell victim himself to the same distraction that had just claimed 3 enemies. He caught himself doing a double take as he saw out of the corner of his eye Kanako deploy her weapon just in time to avoid a burst of gunfire directed at his head. The shooter was then himself shot by one of Keitaro's teammates. Raising his head to fire another burst, his eyes wandered again as Kanako slew another two foes with seemingly contemptuous ease, her unusual naginata cleaving through the vampires, armored vests and all, like a hot knife through butter. He recognized the ice-blue radiance from her eyes, and her overall appearance was at the same time frightening and beautiful. Her facial expression was clearly a snarl, and the hiss that came out of her mouth was unquestionable aggressive in nature, but there was some inexplicable notion of artistic aesthetics about her expression and her movements. Keitaro had always known that Kanako was tough, but his memories of her were nevertheless quite peaceful. He could not help but be hypnotized for a moment at this new vision of his sister. A few seconds later when Keitaro snapped out of it, he realized that there were no longer any enemies left to shoot.

* * *

Meanwhile, the fight on to the front and rear of the building had broken down to hand-to-hand combat as well, as both sides had expending all their ammunition. However, Eizo and Atsumori's teams had had room to move and evade, while most of their enemies were trapped in the pockets of the wreckage of the warehouse. Thus, for the former it was like shooting fish in a barrel and by the time the last carbines and pistols clicked dry the numerical advantage of the defenders had been whittled away to the point where the close quarters combat was being conducted on less than a 2-to-1 ratio in favor of the defenders. Most of the Lycans had shifted to wolf form, and as none of the surviving foreign vampires had any melee weapon more formidable than a wakazashi the battle was quite tilted in favor of the attackers. Less than 10 minutes later it was over.

* * *

17 foreign vampires were found alive amongst the dead, disabled by not-quite-lethal hits from the incendiary rounds, and, to the best of their knowledge, all other enemy vampires had been killed - if any had escaped, judging by the body count lying around them, they could not have been too many in number. However, the attacking team was also now down 15 members, and several others were still in the process of healing. Keitaro himself had a little healing to do, as after the fighting had stopped he realized that an armor-piercing silver-plated round had just managed to penetrate his armor at the side at some point during the fight. Atsumori had been cut down in the last minutes of the battle, nearly split in two vertically by a hidden vampire who had yanked a fire axe off the wall to administer the fatal blow. Eizo had appointed another vampire from his half of the team as Atsumori's replacement, and she was now overseeing the containment of the prisoners. Satisfied that there were no more enemies left in condition to fight, Kanako produced a small cloth from her pocket and wiped her weapon clean of the blood that ran along most of it, then pressed the button on the handle again and pushed the bottom end against the wall, closing the weapon down to its original 30 inch length. 


	25. One Week

Keitaro and Kanako followed Eizo's group back to Gennai's headquarters, as it was much closer than Rikyo's island and the sun would soon be up. The sunproof cloaks that the vampire members of the team were partially made from Kevlar and Aramid, but most of them had nonetheless been torn and punctured in some fashion or another during the short but intense battle. The heavily bound prisoners had been piled into the backs of the vehicles and they had also taken the best remaining weapons from the foreign vampires' stacks and destroyed the rest. This ensured that they'd never be facing the same weapons again and maximized the financial loss to their enemy. In addition, they had captured a couple of filing cabinets full of papers. Both cabinets had suffered some damage and there was no question that some of the information contained therein would not be readable, but nevertheless they no doubt contained valuable insights into the further plans of their enemies.

* * *

Gennai personally greeted them upon their arrival, and after a very short introduction the teams were taken to the guest quarters for some well-earned rest. Unlike the Lycan Dens, most of Gennai's vampires did not live at their headquarters, and so all the vampire members of the teams took guest quarters along side their Lycan comrades. Fortunately, all of Keitaro's Lycans as well as Keitaro himself had had enough foresight to foresee the possibility that they might not return to the Den's island that same night, and so they had all packed a small overnight bag and at least 2 changes of clothes. The prisoners were taken to the brig cells below ground by the headquarters' security personnel.

* * *

"We go from not seeing one another in years to sharing a room, eh? Such is the universe's sense of irony," said Keitaro with a sigh of relaxation as he removed his blood-stained and battered armored vest, tossed his overnight bag into the corner and plunked himself down on one of the quite comfortably cushioned desk chairs provided with the small table. The room was small but well furnished and comfortable. He leaned back in the chair, and by an accident of the layout of the room his eyes again found themselves leveled on Kanako.

"Hope it's alright with you. With the extra security around here these days single quarters are in high demand but short supply, and I told the personnel manager that we could share a double room."

"It's OK with me."

Standing with her left side facing Keitaro, Kanako took off her cloak and began to remove her armor as well. As the exterior trauma plates came off, Keitaro saw that the underlying protective clothing was a one-piece body suit, with the shapes of additional sewn-in trauma plates clearly imprinted over much of it, and it covered her from the top of her neck down to the bottom of her feet. He heard the sound of buckles being undone and then she stepped out of the body suit. At that moment, had Keitaro been taking a swig of a beverage, this was the part where he would have choked on it. As it was, he only just saved himself from falling backwards. Kanako wore no liner underneath her armor. She now had on only a pale gray elastic bra and the matching panties, and Keitaro had barely rebalanced himself on his chair before she deftly slipped out of those as well. Rolling them up, she placed them on top of her armor, which she had stacked in a neat pile in one of the equipment cubbies built into the opposite wall of the bathroom by the front door. As with most of her kind, her flesh was paler than that of most humans or Lycans, but something about every little detail of Kanako's demeanor and the way she carried herself meant that this fact just made her even more beautiful in an icy and 'cold' sort of way.

Kanako seemed almost as startled as Keitaro when she turned to face him and he hastily averted his eyes. Her expression went blank for a moment and then broke into a weak smile. "Surely this isn't the first time you've ever seen a naked woman in your life, Keitaro ..." she said with a very light note of humor in her voice.

"No ... yes ..." he sputtered. "I mean, yes, I have ..." Keitaro managed in a more composed manner. _"Why am I getting so flustered all of a sudden? She's my sister for crying out loud!" _He thought to himself as he became aware of the fact that he must be blushing furiously going by burning sensation in his cheeks.

Kanako retained her weak smile as she took in his reaction for a moment, but then just raised an eyebrow slightly and asked gently, "mind if I shower first?"

"Not at all," Keitaro replied in a slightly still more composed fashion, although the strained nature of the composure was heavily betrayed in his tone of voice. He kept his eyes averted and his blush likewise stayed painted across his face.

Kanako stood there for another moment or two before turning and stepping lightly into the bathroom, which was right by the front door.

* * *

Once he heard the bathroom door close behind Kanako, Keitaro relaxed a bit and his blush faded. He suddenly recognized exactly how he was feeling - it was very like what he felt on his first day at the Hinata Apartments when Kitsune had come into his room and coyly taken his hand and placed it on her breast. The fact that it was nothing more than her plot to get out of a month's rent hadn't done anything to reduce the sexual experience for him, for minimal and of ulterior motive though it had been, it was at that point in his life still the only time he'd ever laid a hand on that particular part of the female anatomy without receiving an immediate beating. It would remain such for some time after that too. However, he was far more experienced in that department now, and moreover, was quite happy with his partner in said experience. He could claim with absolute honesty to have never felt any more intense than sincere friendship towards any woman other than Naru ever since he returned from his 8 month 'training' stint at the Den after his first full moon as a Lycan, and it had been longer still since the unobstructed view of a naked woman had drawn this sort of reaction out of him.

"_Wow ... Kanako's figure sure has developed well over the years ..." _he thought to himself as he moved himself from the chair to his bed, settling in on the thick comforter. _"She's so beautiful ... she's ... ack! Bad thoughts! Bad thoughts! What the hell am I thinking?" _He shook his head and grabbed the remote control, flipping in the TV in an effort to clear his head.

* * *

Kanako closed her eyes and slowly ran her fingers through her hair with a short sigh. Now that she was sure that Keitaro would not reject her for her vampirism, the deep-seated fear that was the very conscious reason why she had never contacted him in the past years, her long suppressed feelings for him were beginning to rise to the surface again. At the very moment she realized that Keitaro was a Lycan she should have figured that a werewolf was not likely to call a vampire a freak, but it had taken the better part of the first day of working together before Kanako was completely convinced that the looks and expressions she saw on his face were only those of surprise and not of scorn. For all the mental work she'd done on herself from her first day as a vampire to accept the fact that she and Keitaro could no longer have a future together, when that old dream of hers once again seemed within the realm of possibility her mindset had been doing a remarkably fast U-turn on the matter. Bearing that in mind, it was ironic that Kanako had actually not had any seductive purpose in mind when she had stripped down in front of Keitaro - she simply had thought to stash her armor neatly away in the cubbies rather than just tossing them aside as her senses of efficiency and fastidiousness far exceeded her notions of modesty. It wasn't until she caught Keitaro's reaction that she realized that it could also be a pretty candid test of what Keitaro thought of her beyond being partners in battle, and she was somewhat discouraged at the apparent results.

"_Could it be that he really doesn't like me after all? That he's just playing along for the sake of our working together on this mission?" _Thought Kanako as she put her face in water stream. _"Is it because I'm a vampire and he's a Lycan? Does he already have a girlfriend? Or ... can he only think of me as his sister and not just as a woman? We're not really brother and sister, and we only actually lived together for a couple of years during our early childhood!" _Kanako lowered her head slightly and sighed again. _"Whatever the case, I probably shouldn't be concentrating on this too hard right now. We've still got a job to do. And who knows, maybe a little of that 'comradery of soldiers in war' could work in my favor ..." _she couldn't help but crack a tiny smile and breathe out a whimper of a chuckle at her last thought. But Kanako decided not to think about it anymore right now, and hustled through the rest of her shower.

* * *

The next morning the team met with Gennai, and after brief honors were held for their dead teammates, they, Gennai and his staff met with Rikyo and some more of his advisors in a video conference to discuss everything that had happened and where they were to go from here. Rikyo and Gennai both congratulated to the surviving team members for their initiative and a job well done. In addition, they had a small reward to offer, but it was exactly what Keitaro had hoped for but had all but given up on for the time being.

"Anyway, about those files that you guys captured. They are all in code, and my codebreaker and his assistants tell me that it will take them no less than a week to crack the code and interpret all those documents. They assure me that there is nothing the lot of you could do to help them, and Rikyo and I have agreed that we should read everything in those files and catch up on our intelligence before making our next move," said Gennai. "Therefore, you are all may take this next week off do as you please, although I would ask that any of you who leave here take all your personal gear with you. While it seems unlikely right now, the codebreakers could have a sudden breakthrough or we could happen upon another enemy stronghold, either or both are always possible, and it will be more efficient for you to convene at a given site rather than having to stop off here to reequip first."

* * *

It had been a rough week for the residents of the Hinata Apartments. The very next night after they'd returned from their camping trip turned bloody fight to the death, Motoko and Naru had decided to come clean with the others about what had really happened. As it turned out, everyone else also had quite clear, albeit somewhat deliberately suppressed, recollections of Keitaro's warning of the possibility of some large conflict in the future, and everyone's mood had taken at least one step downward. The lack of contact from Keitaro was no help. Granted, he had never contacted them during any of his other trips to the Den either, but that was cold comfort against the knowledge that he was likely to be engaging in battle this time around. Keitaro could already be dead for all they knew, and no one thought that his Lycan colleagues would ever bother to tell them the fate of their landlord and friend, especially given that Keitaro had mentioned that only a few of them even knew of the Hinata Apartments.

* * *

"Everyone should be gathering for dinner right about now, what excellent timing we have! This will be a great way for me to introduce you to our resident cook. Her name is Shinobu, and let me assure you, whatever it is that she's whipped up tonight, it will rival the best you've ever had!" Said Keitaro cheerfully as he and Kanako walked up the stairs to the front door of the Hinata Apartments.

Kanako just smiled and lowered her head slightly. "I'll have to take your word for it," she replied, with a hint of mild sarcasm in her voice that Keitaro initially missed.

"What? Don't worry, Shinobu always makes plenty of food, even though they aren't expecting us there will be plenty to go around. You won't have to take my word for ... it ..." Keitaro's words trailed off at the end of his sentence as he turned his head to look at Kanako, and caught her squinted eyes, cocked eyebrow and odd expression that all unmistakably said, 'did you forget who you're talking to?'

"Right. Sorry," said Keitaro as he lowered his own eyes. They both kept walking and were now just a few steps from the top.

Kanako decided to run with the thought. With a sharp and evil grin, she put her thumb and index finger to her chin in a mock expression of thought. "Now, if this cook of yours has a good vein or two, now that I could ..." Her own words were cut of by Keitaro as he snapped his head back up and attempted to drill through her skull with his eyes. Kanako's grin merely widened a bit and she put up her hands and looked away in the classic display of 'just kidding.' To complete her smiting of Keitaro, she copied the exact tone of voice and expression he had used as she said, "Right. Sorry ..."

* * *

Everyone was literally pulling out their chairs at the table to sit down for dinner when they heard the knock at the door. Shinobu had been walking into the dining room from the kitchen with a large bowl of rice. Everyone stopped in their tracks.

Haruka reacted first. "I'll get it," she said. She looked over at Seta and he made a subtle gesture with his arm that, to someone who knew what he was getting at, seemed to refer to a slight bulge hanging under his arm and next to his chest in the light vest he wore over his shirt. Haruka nodded just enough for the acknowledgement to be received and walked out of the dining room and into the entryway.

With her right hand, Haruka subtly wrapped her fingers around the grip of her pistol, which rode just below her beltline, as she cupped her left hand around the peephole of the front door. In the low light it took a moment for her to focus in on the two figures standing outside. When she did, she immediately recognized Keitaro, but it took her a another few moments to recognize the second figure.

"Hope we're not interrupting dinner, I thought we'd get here about 15 minutes sooner than we did but the train was running a little late," said Keitaro once Haruka had opened the door.

Haruka smiled thinly. "It's alright Keitaro, we were actually just sitting down, you're not interrupting anything. Welcome home." Having said that, she turned to look at Keitaro's companion. "Kanako ..."

Keitaro could hear the tension in Haruka's voice when she said Kanako's name.

"I will leave if you want me to. I'm not here to make trouble," said Kanako blandly, although she solidly met Haruka's eyes with her own.

With more hesitation than he could remember seeing on her face in a very long time, Haruka shifted her gaze again to Keitaro, as if she was hoping that he would cue her an answer. Finding no help on Keitaro's face, she looked again at Kanako.

"N ... no, please come in ..." Haruka said. She looked as though she were struggling for something else to say, but Keitaro decided to break the ice first. Slowly stepping forward, Kanako quickly followed suit, and Haruka stood aside to let them enter. The three of them walked into the dining room together.

"Welcome home, Keitaro." Naru, who had immediately formed the hope that it was Keitaro as soon as the door knock sounded, was the first to see him, though her expression changed from one of relief to one of inquiry when she saw Kanako.

"Good evening everyone. Seems like I'm just in time for dinner," he said with a smile. "Miss anything while I was gone?"

"Just more of the usual," replied Naru. "Who's your new friend?" She then asked, gesturing to Kanako.

Keitaro rolled his eyes at himself. "Forgive me. Everyone, I'd like you to meet Kanako. Kanako, this is Naru, the cook over there is Shinobu, and that's Suu, Motoko, Kitsune, Seta, Sara, and Mutsumi."

Everyone bowed their head or waved or otherwise sounded off as their name was mentioned.

"Kanako is my sister."

Keitaro's last words prompted the sort of subtle exchange of glances that take place when one of those 'all this time I never knew that' bits of information comes out as Haruka took her seat and Keitaro and Kanako each grabbed an extra chair.

"It's nice to meet you, Kanako. I'll go get you and Keitaro a place setting," said Shinobu politely as she set down the tray of sushi she'd been carrying and bowed again in Kanako's direction.

Keitaro opened his mouth to speak, but Kanako beat him to the draw. "Thank you very much my lady, Keitaro speaks very highly of your work, but I'm afraid I'll have to pass," she said, bowing her head to Shinobu.

Shinobu seemed puzzled. Kanako looked at Keitaro, who gave his nod of approval.

"Take no offense, Miss Shinobu. I would get very sick if I were to indulge myself in your masterpieces. The price a vampire pays for her powers and immortality is to forever give up the delight of good Japanese cooking."

Kanako had spoken so bluntly and matter-of-factly that it took everyone around the table a moment to catch what she had said. Keitaro knew that he had made crystal-clear that Japanese vampires were not to blame for what had been happening, but just to remind everyone and remove any possibility of misunderstanding, he spoke up.

"Kanako is the leader of a delegation sent by the Japanese vampire nation to my Den in response to these attacks from the outside. You see, it was not only Lycans who were hit by these foreign vampires. Similar attacks were leveled against the leadership structure of Japanese vampires. Therefore, the native Lycan and vampire populations are working together to meet this common enemy."

Keitaro and Kanako both noticed a very definite look of discomfort pass over most of the faces around them as Keitaro had begun to speak, although the look dissipated somewhat as Keitaro finished.

* * *

Kitsune had done what she does so well and lightened the mood shortly after the introduction had been completed, and the rest of dinner passed more or less normally. Kanako had done her best not to stand out too much and had partaken in the casual conversation, which by the time dinner was over had improved the comfort level in the room, although Haruka's lightened demeanor had still seemed somewhat strained. Afterwards, when everyone had gone their own way for the night, Keitaro, Kanako and Naru found themselves alone out on one of the front balconies, where they managed some more small talk for short while until Haruka passed below them, seemingly on her way to her tea shop. It was of course closed, but Haruka liked to check on things and see how the day went after the shop was closed.

Kanako's demeanor changed immediately, her expression changing from casual to deadly serious. Keitaro and Naru both noticed, but after a short moment of silence, Kanako spoke before either of them did.

"I hate to cut this short, but I think Aunt Haruka and I have got a few old skeletons that need to be buried," she said in a very purposeful manner. Naru seemed to take alarm for an instant, until she saw Keitaro looking down at Haruka and nodding.

"It would make me happy if you two did just that," he said softly. "Want me to go with you?"

Kanako shook her head. "No. If I know Haruka at all, if you came with me she'd assume that I was only approaching her because you had dragged me along to do it and I doubt very much if anything worthwhile would be achieved. As it is I imagine the first thing she'll say is, 'did Keitaro put you up to this?' I appreciate the support though."

Keitaro stood up from leaning on the balcony rail and put his hand on her shoulder. "Well, let me know if you think it would help if I had a word with her myself."

Kanako stood up and smiled at him. "I will Keitaro. Thank you." She took his hand and gave it a light kiss. Without saying another word, she gracefully turned and went back inside. After a few moments of silence, Naru spoke up.

"What's the story between those two?" She asked quietly.

Keitaro looked down and closed his eyes. "When we were younger, those two had about as ugly a relationship as I've ever seen within the same family. For every memory I have of the two of them getting along, I can easily come up with five memories of them fighting. They might have come to blows more than once had someone else not been around to break it up. Neither of us really had much of a family life even before we became family, but after that pretty much everyone on both sides save those two managed at least a working relationship. But if Haruka and Kanako could be in the same room for more than an hour without getting into some kind of argument, that was considered 'working' for them."

"Both sides? What do you mean?"

"Kanako and I are not related by blood, only by marriage," replied Keitaro. "We were young enough when we first met and we got along so well that our relationship quickly became like brother and sister. I like to think that it was our successful relationship that helped steer most of the rest of the family in that direction. Everyone except Haruka and Kanako of course."

"You don't think Haruka is in danger, do you?"

"No. If I thought that Kanako would hurt Haruka or anyone else here, I would never have brought her here in the first place. Kanako doesn't hate Haruka, and I really don't think Haruka hates Kanako either. If for no other reason, Kanako won't touch her because she knows that I love Haruka."

There was yet another brief span of silence.

"Anyway, we will only be here for a week at most, then we'll have to leave again. So let's make the most of it," Keitaro said as he turned to look at Naru.

"Why only a week?"

Keitaro's expression sombered a bit. "This war is far from over. We destroyed an enemy staging last night, but that could not have been their entire force. Captured data is being studied and prisoners are being interrogated right now, that's why we have even this one week, but once we've got more information, we've still got a job to finish."

"So it really is happening then. That great battle you warned us about a long time ago. You're going to go away again."

"I'm afraid so."

Naru was silent for a few moments, then she looked away and down before speaking.

"You'll just drop off the face of the earth. I'll not see nor hear from you for who knows how long, or never again if you should happen to get yourself killed, as odd an event as that might be in something like a savage battle between werewolves and vampires and more vampires."

Keitaro was stung by her tone of voice. There was sadness, but there was also anger. It had been a long time since he'd heard her use that tone of voice on him. Or at all for that matter.

"Hey ... Naru ... come on now, you've kno..."

"DAMN it Keitaro, you don't owe those people ANYTHING! You didn't ASK for them to nearly kill you and then turn you into tool for their battle that has nothing to do with you! We were just minding our own business and they DRAGGED you into their world! Don't these past couple years count for anything! Don't **I **count for something! Why don't you just tell those packmates of yours where they can stick their little feud and to leave you the hell alone?"

Keitaro had rested his elbow on the balcony rail and put his hand over his face in a gesture of exasperation as Naru ranted. Hearing the rant stop, he spoke.

"Are you finished?"

No answer from Naru. Keitaro let out a sigh and continued.

"First off ... did you know that I am the first Lycan in nearly half a century to continue to live his human life after being turned?"

Still nothing out of Naru, but Keitaro knew the answer anyway.

"There is no written rule per se against doing so, but it's one of those things that just isn't done. If they were as inconsiderate and uncaring as you say, they would have never let me come back here at all. You'd have never seen me again after the night I was whisked away. Speaking of which, with regards to your suggestion that I try to avoid my responsibilities, do you really need to be reminded that they could retrieve me quite easily if I attempted to do so. Only this time, having proved that you all are a such a source of distraction to me fulfilling my duties, they'd probably kill all of you to remove the distraction, and if I still refused, they'd force me to pass on my lineage, and then kill me too."

Naru's eyes were by now filling with tears, and she could no longer meet his gaze. She looked away as he continued.

"You do not understand Lycan society and how it works, because you are not a Lycan. It's a little different than ordinary human society. But you should easily be capable of understanding the concept of duty. Responsibility."

Keitaro's eyes began to bead a few tears now.

"Do you honestly think that I _want_ to leave again? Do you really think I _enjoy_ being away from you, the person I love with all my heart, and everyone else here whom I consider family? Hell, do you think I even enjoy fighting at all, even if I could do so with you at my side? Does ANY of this strike you as having my name written all over it?"

Keitaro was unaware that anger was beginning to seep into his voice, but Naru was quite aware of it, and her own anger was fast melting into guilt, and the sadness she was feeling wasn't going anywhere but worse.

"I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you ... me .. us ... are not the center of the universe! The world is not revolving around our needs and desires! There are much larger forces at work in the world than a young couple in love! I know it's tragic but that doesn't make it any less true! Rightly or wrongly and whether we like it or not, I have been made a part of one of those larger events. You're right, this was nothing I asked for. It was thrust upon me, there was nothing I could have done to avoid it, this is just the way things are and how _dare _you make me pay for it like this!"

Keitaro's words had their intended effect. Perhaps more of an effect than intended. With very little physical movement, Naru seemed to shrink, and her body began to shake slightly with held-in sobs. At that moment Keitaro became aware of anger in his voice, and the sight of Naru crying quickly disarmed it. Wiping his own tears, he walked over to Naru and gently embraced her in a hug.

"Keitaro ... I'm sorry," whispered Naru, in the sort of whisper one uses when they are too choked up to speak normally.

"It's OK," Keitaro replied quietly.

"I'm just scared, Keitaro," Naru whispered.

Keitaro put his hand under her chin and gently raised her head so that her eyes met his. "Don't be," he said, doing his best to smile. "I am leading a team of the strongest, fastest, smartest, best trained immortals that Japan has produced. Our adversaries are cocky, arrogant, and overconfident. And we've got home field advantage."

Naru tried to smile, although she met with minimal success.

"Don't think that I've forgotten that you and I still have a 'and they lived happily ever after' story to live out. I promise I won't deny you that story. I promise."

Naru just managed a weak smile at that moment, and then Keitaro kissed her.

* * *

Kanako had gone around and past Haruka, and was waiting for her at the door of the tea shop as she walked up. Haruka quickly noticed her as she came within sight of the shop. Unfazed, Haruka didn't miss a step or slow her pace in the least. Their eyes met, and a moment later Haruka reached front steps.

"Did Keitaro put you up to this by any chance?" Haruka asked as she stepped up onto the porch, neither slowing her pace as she walked to the front door nor stopping for an instant before unlocking it. But, as she stepped inside, Haruka did not close the door behind her. "Well, whatever the case, let's get it over with. You coming in or not?" Came Haruka's voice a moment later from well inside the shop.

Kanako, who was still standing on the front porch leaning against the wall by the front door with her arms crossed, shook her head and half-chuckled, half-sighed. _"Here we go ..." _she thought to herself, and with a deep breath spun on her heel and stepped inside the shop, gently closing the door behind her.


	26. Kanako and Haruka

"It's nice to see you again too, Haruka," said Kanako after a few minutes with the sort of thinly spoken but thickly meant sarcasm that both women were well known for inside their own circles. Kanako had taken a seat at the counter while Haruka worked as soon as they got inside the shop, and Kanako had thought to let Haruka have the first words. But Haruka had just gone about her business as though Kanako wasn't even present, completely ignoring her. 

Haruka kept on working but did look up at Kanako as she spoke. "Look ... I'm content to let the past be the past. I understand that you and Keitaro are partners in this unfortunate business and that the two of you have remarkable chemistry together, but I think you'll agree that you and I are unlikely to achieve anything much more than uneasy truce for the sake of our mutual friends. Believe it or not I'd rather not create any more unpleasant memories between us, I think there's quite enough already. So I think we'd all be better off if you and I just did our best to work around each other while you're here."

"I didn't come here to create more bad memories. And while I'm quite well aware that facing up to the unpleasantries of the past is not and has never been something that you've excelled at, I am not quite so content to just let the past stand as it is."

"Exactly why did you come here then, Kanako?"

"After a near death experience or two, you start to see the value in cleaning up your old messes and not leaving unfinished business in your wake. You of all people I know understand that concept, Haruka. I know it, you know it, and you know I know it, so even if you have no interest in perhaps patching up some old wounds surely you can at least grant me the courtesy of not playing me for a fool."

Haruka stopped what she was doing at her words and sighed. She stood still and silent for a moment, then purposefully set down the clipboard she'd been using and slowly walked over to the counter until she was standing just opposite of Kanako.

"Alright Kanako. I'm sorry."

Kanako was pleased that she'd won this small concession from Haruka. "Now, I'll return you the same courtesy - I won't pretend that I can make you either talk to me or listen to me because _I_ know better than _that_. But I am going to say what I have to say regardless, and then my conscience will be clear. Whether or not you take any of it to heart or get a few things off your own chest is entirely your choice."

Haruka cocked an eyebrow and could not help but crack a thin smile. "I'm impressed, Kanako. Very smooth handoff of responsibility."

Kanako's eyes locked firmly into Haruka's. "Yeah, well, I learned from the best of them."

Haruka grabbed a stool herself and pulled it over to where she had been standing, leaning over on the counter and reestablished the eyeball lock that Kanako had made a moment before, although this time their faces were only a few inches apart. "Very well. I'll give this a chance. So, would you like to go first, or shall I?"

For the sake of what she was trying to do, Kanako resisted her immediate temptation, which was to give a sarcastic response. But she did crack a somewhat provocative smile. "For all your resistance, it would seem that you need this even more than I do. Why don't you go first."

Kanako's baiting of Haruka was working. The elder Urashima's face contorted slightly and signaled to her adoptive niece that her challenge was finally and unreservedly accepted even before she spoke. "Gosh, where do I begin ..."

* * *

Keitaro and Naru had gone for a walk, where Keitaro had more or less succeeded in encouraging pleasant conversation, if only after Naru succeeded in getting him to swear not to take 'unnecessary risks' in the fighting to come. By the time they got back home Naru was getting sleepy, but for the sake of maximum efficiency while working with his vampire partners Keitaro was on the night shift, and so he stayed with Naru until she was asleep, but then meandered outside to wait for Haruka and Kanako to return. By then the two had already been at it for several hours.

* * *

"... Now wait just a damn minute here! _You're_ the one who went all-out bitch in the first place! What the hell did you expect me to do! Smile, do a little dance and walk away!" Kanako bellowed desperately. She had been quite sure of herself going into this little family therapy session and had planned on giving Haruka a good humbling, but she had underestimated her estranged aunt ... and, it seemed, overestimated the solidity of the ground on which she herself stood on the very issues she had intended to drag Haruka through the coals over. Haruka had defended herself much more successfully than Kanako had at all anticipated - far from driving Haruka into the ground, the intended 'humblee' remained firmly on her feet. As this was contrary to her plan thus far, Kanako was now the more agitated of the two, and Haruka would have been lying to say that she derived no pleasure from that fact.

"_Yes_, as a matter of fact, because putting your disgruntled, upstart ass in its place - going 'all-out bitch' as you call it - would not have been necessary had you not so _grossly_ overstepped your bounds. For some reason you have no concept of action and consequence ... did you really expect _me_ - or _any_ of us - to smile, do a little dance and let you get away such an action as yours!"

Kanako seemed to ponder a response for a moment. Haruka let Kanako stew for that moment before driving her point home.

"You've got some prodigious nerve to stand here and accuse me of malice, you know that Kanako?" Haruka said, her voice low, quiet, and carrying her most menacing tone, the sort that may well have ended the argument right then and there against any lesser will than her adoptive niece. "Every single thing that I've ever done 'to' you was nothing more malicious than enacting the direct consequences of your own pompous and arrogant attempts to be the master of a family that is not even your own. Were it not for Keitaro's bond with you, and the perhaps insistence of a few others with patience greater than my own, I can actually assure you that many of those things would never have happened at all, as I would have personally seen to it that you were stripped of the Urashima name and sent on your merry way before half of them had ever gone down. Had you not left when you did, you'd probably be answering to a different name by now."

Kanako's expression darkened and her own tone and volume matched Haruka's menace for menace. "You flatter yourself, my dear Haruka. What could I possibly have ever done to leave you with the grave misconception that I would stop addressing myself as an Urashima just because you and your cronies within the family told me to? For someone who loves to claim 'protecting the family name' as much as you do, you sure presume an extraordinary lack of respect for it among everyone else."

"Let me tell yo..."

"No, let _me_ tell _you_ something," Kanako interrupted sharply, her voice changing again, this time to something more neutral. Almost audibly swallowing her pride, she decided to make her next move. "Though I doubt very much that you've ever thought so highly of me, I've never doubted the sincerity of your love for your family. Indeed, therein lay the heart of your problem - you love your family so much that you decided that no one else was allowed to. You thought that only you, and those personally approved by you, were worthy to be a part of it."

Most of the 'conversation' thus far could better be defined as an increasingly disorderly and angry exchange of accusations and even the occasional flat-out insult. Kanako's sudden shift in tactics took Haruka off guard. While she had certainly planned to blow off some steam, it had been Kanako's honest hope that by the end of their session she and Haruka might find some small measure of peace between them. Kanako's mind had for most of the night been running on the blow-off-steam mode. She smirked inwardly at leaving Haruka without a word on her tongue with her sudden shift away from angry accusation. Both of those things were items of exceptional rarity in the history of their interactions. Before her swallowed pride forced its way back up, Kanako continued.

" 'Pompous, arrogant attempts to be the master of a family that is not my own?' You're wrong. The FACT of the matter is that I loved this family even before I was adopted into it. Where you and I went afoul is when I moved for what I thought was best and it happened to conflict with your own ideas. Whereas any reasonable person would have recognized a simple conflict of ideas for what it was, you thought that the only way someone could have a vision for the family different than your own was for them to be a pompous, arrogant upstart. Or an idiot. Or a self-righteous bitch. Or any of the other words you used to describe it."

Haruka crossed her arms and bore her eyes even deeper into Kanako's in an effort to appear a little less off guard, but Kanako was not fooled. Encouraged though by Haruka's apparent receptiveness, she moved forward.

"You say I acted without thought? That my actions were selfish? My actions were not without thought. I knew exactly what I was doing, why, and what would most likely become of it. I was never taken by surprise at the backlash in my direction. I especially never had any doubt what _you_ were going to do. Selfish? Over whom did we fight the nastiest - myself, or Keitaro? Or Benjiro? Or Setsuko? Or whichever family member happened to be the matter of concern at the time? And how do you perceive me as benefiting from making enemies with the most influential voices in the family? What on earth did I gain out of any of that? No, Haruka. If you stop for a moment to think honestly about it, you will see that it is _you_, not me, who acted most thoughtlessly. You never gave the slightest consideration or thought to why I was doing the things I was doing, you just ran with your automatic presumption that anything in opposition to you must be malignant in nature. Though you are no doubt at loathe to admit it, you may recall that almost every motion of mine that was carried against your kicking and screaming ended well for everyone involved. You probably caused everyone - not just you and I - at least as much stress as I did simply because you wanted to fight me over anything I ever did, said or suggested that involved another person. I'll admit that there were times when I should have backed down myself, I won't deny that I was just as bull-headed as you. Having said that, there were most definitely times when you should have backed off as well. But speaking of acting selfishly, sometimes you were more concerned with proving that you loved the family more and knew what was best better than me than with what was actually best for anyone - them, me, or even you yourself."

Haruka had slowly been absorbing Kanako's words as she spoke. Haruka seemed to be resisting, but Kanako thought she could see reluctant acknowledgement breaking through the stonewall in Haruka's demeanor.

"All of a sudden you have nothing to say? That's mighty hard to believe," Kanako said after letting the silence stand for a minute.

Haruka thought in silence for another minute or two before speaking. She took a deep breath before doing so.

"I have to admit, I'd never looked at things that way before. Much as it pains me to say it, I can't argue against your points."

Kanako thought prior to the moment that getting Haruka to this point would have left her brim full of self-satisfaction. Now that it had happened, Kanako felt no such thing.

"I have to accept my share of the responsibility for the way things turned out. I certainly could have handled some things better than I did, and I certainly did some things that I should not have done," Haruka continued solemnly.

"As did I," Kanako added quietly. "Speaking of which, I suppose I should take back some of the things I said earlier tonight."

Haruka huffed. "Don't go poking holes in your credibility after that little speech. That was good, honest, old-fashioned venting, as was the better part of what I said myself. It's only because of that we managed even as well as we did back in the day. Don't knock it."

Kanako was blank for a moment, but then smiled and let out a thin chuckle. "Right."

A moment of awkward silence.

"Well," began Kanako, standing up from her stool and stretching. "I'm sure you've got some work to do and it's getting late. I know that this might not have been the best time for you, but I thought this was indeed something that we should 'get over with.'" Kanako emphasized her last words in reference to what Haruka had said before Kanako had even set foot inside the shop.

"Anyway, I'm not operating under the illusion that years of anger and resentment can be swept away in one night, but may I at least operate under the assumption that it's something we can work on together from now on?"

Haruka regarded Kanako's question for a moment, then looked to her and smiled weakly. She said nothing, but offered her hand for a handshake. Kanako returned her smile and accepted the gesture. Their eyes stayed locked for the duration of the handshake, at the conclusion of which Kanako simply bowed politely and excused herself from the shop.

* * *

Keitaro had taken to pacing casually back and forth across the front porch as he waited. He heard the faint sounds of footsteps at about the same time he saw a solitary figure walking slowly up the path. Cocking an eyebrow, he broke his pace and walked down the steps towards Kanako. She seemed lost in her own thoughts, and didn't seem to notice Keitaro until he was nearly within soft speaking distance. She looked up and smiled at him as he walked up to her.

Keitaro allowed a moment's tact silence before asking the inevitable question. "How'd it go?"

Kanako chuckled lightly. "I'm surprised you didn't hear it for yourself from here."

Keitaro bore an expression of concern. "That bad, huh?"

Kanako shook her head. "It could hardly have gone any other way at first. As I'm sure you could have guessed, there was some steam to be blown off before any terms could be reached."

Keitaro nodded. "Yeah, I guess so."

They turned and started walking the remaining short distance to the Hinata Apartments.

"Where did Haruka go?" Asked Keitaro as they walked.

"She's still at the tea shop so far as I know. She didn't exactly get done whatever she had intended to do."

Keitaro looked over at her and smiled. "Well, I'm really happy that you did this. I was always in a difficult position with the two of you. I loved you both, and it always tore at me to see you guys have at each other the way you often did. I don't think Haruka would have taken the initiative here, so my hat's off to you for taking the first step."

Kanako just nodded silently and too Keitaro's hand in hers. They crossed the rest of the distance in silence. When they got inside, Keitaro took Kanako up to a guest room.

* * *

"The sun should be up in another hour or two. When exactly do you typically go to bed, anyway?" Keitaro asked as he helped Kanako put clips on the curtains to hold them shut.

"Within an hour or two of sunup when circumstances allow," she replied. She smiled wryly and looked at Keitaro. "I hope you Lycans are appreciative of having full run of the clock. It can be very inconvenient sometimes having to work around something as omnipresent as daylight."

"Well at least you vampire folk don't have to either find clothing that has about a ten size stretch or find yourselves naked at the end of a battle. Talk about inconvenient," Keitaro threw in with a smile of his own and a wink.

Kanako opened one of her bags and took out a laptop computer. "Do you guys have high-speed connections here?" She asked.

"We sure do. The connections are right over there by the desk."

"Good. Do you mind if connect to Gennai's network from here? Every part of the network and connecting to it is fully encrypted and secure, I can promise you that even if anyone tried there is no way they could trace it back here."

Keitaro laughed. "Go right ahead. Suu has tinkered around with our connections herself, also with the aim of making it impossible to trace something back here. Between her efforts and yours I'm not worried in the least."

Kanako smiled again. "Remind me to have at least one good conversation with her before we leave. I will check in and check for any new orders or developments or anything else that we should know."

"I'm quite confident in Suu's work to prevent our location from being automatically traced, but please don't tell them where we are, OK? Very few people even from my own Den know about this place, and I'd just assume no one else on your end know about it either."

Kanako nodded in understanding. "No problem. I doubt they'll even try to trace my location anyway. I habitually don't give them my precise whereabouts. They're used to it."

"Alright then, I'll leave you to your own business. I'll be in my room if you need anything."

"Thank you Keitaro. See you tomorrow."

"Good night."

Keitaro quietly closed the door to Kanako's room and made his way back to his, where Naru was sleeping. Silently slipping inside, he closed his door. Naru would probably be asleep for a good four or five more hours, and Keitaro really didn't think he'd get to sleep for at least another two or three, but after changing into some pajamas he nevertheless slowly snuggled himself under the sheets next to Naru, taking care not to disturb her. Once there, although he had not been especially tired, the heat from Naru's body and her slow, rhythmic breathing quickly soothed him, and he was asleep within an hour. Thus, he was not awake when about two hours after he had left Kanako's room, Kanako softly knocked on his door. Hearing no answer, Kanako had quietly opened the door a little. Peeking inside, she had stared at Keitaro for a moment, he and Naru now somewhat curled up together in their sleep, then lowered her eyes, looked away to the side, and closed the door again.


	27. Kanako's Dilemma

Naru only just managed to stop herself from waking Keitaro up before breakfast, remembering what he had told her the night before about the schedule he was on. She reminded the others of this as Keitaro's absence was quickly noticed around the table. Kanako had left a note on her door politely but curtly stating that she was not to be disturbed. Haruka had called just after breakfast from her tea shop. She had not budgeted for the time she and Kanako had been grinding through their affairs and as such, she had been working throughout the night and had literally fallen asleep at her desk, only to be awoken by her morning shift when they arrived. After breakfast, everyone had gone about their business more or less as usual, Keitaro's solid demeanor and Kanako's confidence when they had spoken briefly at dinner about their upcoming mission had reduced the tension that had formed about the nature of this particular bout of Keitaro's absence to a functional degree. Lunchtime came and went, again without the presence of Keitaro or Kanako. It was not until about an hour before sundown that Keitaro first stirred.

"Good evening sunshine," Naru said softly with a weak smile. She had been reading quietly in his room for over an hour now as she waited for him to rise.

Keitaro blinked a few times as he looked at his clock.

"Wow. I didn't think I'd sleep this long," he said.

Naru's expression became unreadable. "Well, I suppose a night of hard warfare followed immediately by a day of interrogation and meetings will tire you out."

Keitaro sighed as he sat up. "Come on Naru, don't start that again first thing in the morning, OK? If this really is my last week alive, as you seem so firmly convinced, then if I make it my last wish, will you just drop it and let us make the most of this time?"

Naru was silent for just a moment and wore an expression of frustration, then looked away and sighed. Keitaro knew that expression, it was what she often did when she had been trapped with words.

"Alright?" Keitaro asked in a reasonably cheerful voice.

Naru knew that she had lost this argument even before it had begun, and she could not deny that Keitaro's point was a valid one - especially if her fears were to be realized.

"Alright," she replied simply.

Keitaro chuckled a little, which drew a questioning glance from Naru.

"You sound so ... defeated ... at the prospect of having to enjoy a week's time with me. I'm hurt." He made his tone of voice more playful than serious with his last words.

Naru made as though to say something, but then thought better of it. Forcing herself to smile, she said, "not at all, Keitaro." She stood up and walked over to Keitaro, offering her hand to help him out of bed. Keitaro accepted the offer and she pulled him to his feet.

* * *

As the two of them walked down the hallway, they came into view of Kanako's guest room, where the door was still closed and the note she had posted was still affixed to it. Keitaro slowed down as they neared the door and stopped just beside it, craning his ear as though he heard something. Naru heard nothing.

"Kanako? It's Keitaro, and Naru's with me. May we come in?" Keitaro said as he gently rapped on the door.

"Yes," came a short but oddly peaceful reply from inside the room. Keitaro and Naru exchanged a glace before Keitaro slowly pushed open the door.

Kanako still wore her nightgown. Her eyes were closed as she gracefully performed a ballet-like kata with her black naginata extended to its full length. Only the blade at the tip of the fat end reminded one of the deadly intent of her dance - if it was a simple staff that she wielded, it would have been hard to guess that Kanako was performing a dance of war and not one of art. At the sound of the door closing behind Keitaro and Naru, Kanako brought her movements to an equally graceful stop and opened her eyes.

"Forgive the intrusion, I heard you milling about and thought to say Hi," Keitaro said.

Kanako shook her head slightly and smiled weakly. "It's alright, brother. Just starting off the night with a little soothing routine."

"Soothing? Did you not sleep well or something?"

As Kanako opened her mouth to speak, her eyes involuntarily glanced over at Naru, and her words tripped on the tip of her tongue as for just a second or two she seemed to deliberate her reply.

"No," she said, with a just barely detectable trace of restraint. "No offense to your accommodations, I was just up a little late doing some research on my computer for our next operation, that's all."

Both Keitaro and Naru were able to pick up on the less-than-straightforwardness of Kanako's reply. Keitaro seemed a little puzzled, but Naru, who also noticed that her presence seemed to be making Kanako uncomfortable, decided to try and break the ice.

"That's a beautiful weapon you have there, Kanako. You should show that to Motoko while you're here, I'm sure she'd love to see it. I've never seen a weapon like that before," Naru said to Kanako in her best friendly voice.

Kanako was blank for a short second, and then a thin smile broke crisply across her face, one which seemed slightly less friendly than the gesture offered by Naru. With only her right arm, she lifted the pointed tip off the ground and flipped the weapon sideways, offering it to Naru. Naru politely accepted the weapon, but when Kanako let go of the weapon just as Naru's fingers closed around it, Naru's eyes opened wide with surprise as she nearly dropped it, in the manner that one does when handed something that turns out to be much heavier than they were expecting. Keitaro's response was less dramatic but he too was clearly surprised. Naru was no immortal to be sure, but she was by no means a weakling.

"I should think not," began Kanako as Naru recovered and hefted the weapon vertically and let the small, pointed end rest on the floor. "The entire weapon is forged from a tungsten-based alloy to give it unmatched strength and edge-holding, but it does add something to the weight."

Keitaro nodded approvingly. "Very impressive indeed, Kanako. Must have cost a pretty penny."

"It certainly would have if I'd paid money for it. A very wealthy member of the vampire community owes his very existence to me."

Naru tipped the weapon back towards Kanako, who quickly picked it up as though it were made of paper maché, pressed the button, and pulled the segments closed by hand.

"Anyway, what's the nightlife like around here?" Asked Kanako as she walked over to the center of her room where her bedroll was still rolled out across the floor and gently placed her weapon atop her bag.

Keitaro looked over at Naru and said, "you know of any plans for the evening?"

Naru shook her head. "No one's mentioned any specific plans to me."

Keitaro looked back at Kanako. "Well then, why don't we talk about it at dinner?"

Kanako nodded her head.

"Well, we'll leave you to your business for now. See you when you come down," said Keitaro, and with that he and Naru left Kanako's room. Kanako stared at the door after they had left for a minute or two, and then started getting ready for the night.

* * *

By the end of dinner everyone had taken noticed of the lowered tension in Haruka compared to the previous night, but Kanako seemed, if any different, perhaps a little more on edge, although the direction of her discomfort was no longer apparent. Nevertheless, dinner was an all-round pleasant affair. After the meal was over, Keitaro took leave with Naru up to her room. As was expected, Suu was by then exhibiting interest in Kanako, and Shinobu seemed intrigued by the notion of Keitaro having a younger sister. Kitsune was becoming interested in Kanako as well, but for a very different reason. She had been watching Kanako all throughout dinner, and all the while Kanako's eyes had been darting to and from Naru. It had been obvious that it was usually the involuntary sort of glance, as when someone for reasons good or bad simply cannot keep their eyes off of something or someone else. That in of itself might have been odd, but what piqued Kitsune's curiosity - as well as planting the seeds of concern - was the fact that anytime Naru spoke or was otherwise made the legitimate center of attention, Kanako's eyes had firmly locked onto her in a manner that Kitsune recognized as dislike that was attempting to be disguised as interest. In her pre-Koan days Kitsune had used that exact same demeanor to lucrative effect on inebriated men in bars and clubs. However, she couldn't imagine what Kanako could possibly want from Naru, nor could she think of any reason Kanako would have to dislike Naru. But, Kitsune being Kitsune, she made up her mind to find out.

* * *

Kitsune had wandered out to the lounge area after dinner whereas Kanako had hung back in the dining room with Suu and Shinobu. As Kitsune walked back towards to kitchen to ask Kanako for a little of her time, she practically ran into Kanako who was on her way out of the dining room.

"Kanako! I'm sorry. I was just coming to talk to you," said Kitsune in a genuinely friendly voice.

Kanako smiled. "What a coincidence. I was just coming to talk to you," she said, her voice devoid of any indicators that Kitsune knew how to read. This lack of any sense of where Kanako was coming from put some apprehension into Kitsune, but she nevertheless decided not to waste the golden opportunity.

Not wavering in her cheerful voice, Kitsune smiled back and said, "very good then, shall we head out for a while?"

"Yes we shall."

* * *

Keitaro and Naru lay together underneath her sheets, small beads of sweat still showing on both their brows. Naru seemed more at ease than she had ever since the rude ending of their camping trip with Motoko, but nevertheless she was troubled.

"What's on your mind, dear?" Asked Keitaro after the two had laid silently side by side for a good 10 minutes.

Naru turned her head to look at him. "You mean besides that which you made me promise not to talk about anymore?"

Keitaro nodded lightly. "So there is something else?"

"Yes."

"Is it something I can help with?"

"I don't know."

"Try me."

Naru paused for a moment and took a deep breath. "Please don't take offense, but it's your sister."

"Kanako? You don't like her?" Keitaro sounded surprised.

"It's not that I don't like her, it's more like the very opposite. I don't think she likes me."

Keitaro raised an eyebrow and looked over at her. "What makes you say that?"

"Just a feeling I've got. The way she looks at me, the way she talks to me, especially at dinner. She's never said anything about me to you?"

"Not a word."

Naru didn't say anything else.

"Is that really what's bothering you?" Asked Keitaro after a few moments.

"Well, yeah, that's part of it."

"Care to tell me the rest?"

Naru sighed. "I thought I saw something else in her eyes going on behind the scenes. It's something I recognize from my own deck of cards."

Naru paused again and waited for Keitaro to shoot her a quizzical look.

"Jealousy."

Keitaro let slip a huff, closed his eyes and looked away, half-chuckling, half-sighing. "Naru, I thought we had past this stage years ago. For Pete's sake, she's my sister!"

"But you said that you two aren't really related."

"Not by blood we aren't, but we were raised together as brother and sister, and that's the nature of the relationship."

Naru was silent for a moment.

"I'm rather offended by the notion that after all we've been through together, you still think that I am so easily lured away by the temptations of other women," said Keitaro, in a voice that suggested that he really wanted this line of thought to end.

Naru knew that she had been beaten again, and she did not want to irk Keitaro too much and put too much a stain on the week. Forcing herself to smile, she turned to him and gave him a light kiss on the cheek.

"I'm sorry Keitaro. That's not really what I meant. I don't know what I meant. I'm sorry."

Keitaro smiled weakly. "It's OK. Now, can we _please _just try and enjoy the week and not waste it on unpleasantness?"

"Yes."

* * *

Meanwhile, Kanako and Kitsune had gone for a walk as they talked. Kitsune had to admit that she was quite impressed at the wit and perception of her younger companion. It had been her intention to wring the information she sought from Kanako through her tried-and-true techniques of indirect inquiry, baiting and clever choice of words, but it seemed as though Kanako had the same idea - the Fox found herself matching wits with someone who was very much her equal in this game. Fortunately for Kitsune, the topic about which Kanako was inquiring was none other than Naru. She was being somewhat less subtle about her questions that Kitsune was, which allowed Kitsune to shoot questions back as she gave her increasingly reserved answers. Up until now Kanako had been mainly prying about Naru herself, but she was now beginning to ask about her relationship with Keitaro.

"... so Keitaro and Naru are lovers then?" Asked Kanako frankly.

Kitsune almost stumbled at the question. "Well ... yes, they are. And have been for several years now. The rest of us have been wondering when they are going to get married."

Kanako was silent and stirred in an expression that was unreadable beyond that of general displeasure. Kitsune cocked an eyebrow and frowned. After a moment, Kanako spoke again.

"Married huh? An immortal marrying a human? Does Keitaro plan to bite her or something?"

Kanako had spoken quietly, but there was an underlying tone in her voice that immediately made Kitsune uncomfortable.

"Umm ... I'm inclined to doubt it. From what Keitaro's told us, Lycans are not supposed to turn humans without some sort of prior arrangement or permission from their leaders."

More uncomfortable silence out of Kanako.

"Don't worry, they are quite happy together. I admire your concern for your brother, but I promise you that they are a well-matched couple. You should be happy for him."

Kanako took another short bout of silence, and then said shortly and matter-of-factly, "Keitaro is not really my brother."

Kitsune did stumble at those words.

"I was incorporated into the Urashima family for a number of reasons that I'm not going to get into when I was very young. Keitaro and I were raised as siblings, but we are not related by blood."

"I ... see ..." Kanako's unexpected revelation knocked Kitsune's train of thought right off its track.

Though she rarely invited Naru's wrath by saying so to her face, 'Jealousy' and 'Naru' had become synonyms in Kitsune's mind from a time not long after Keitaro had first arrived at the Hinata Apartments. Although Kanako expressed it differently, Kitsune had become familiar enough with that particular emotion during the early days of the Naru/Keitaro relationship - particularly once Mutsumi had entered the picture - that she had become pretty quick to pick up on it. Hell, she'd probably have felt bits of it herself as she watched Naru and Keitaro grow so close had she and Koan not become an item when they did. Had she not been operating under the belief that Kanako and Keitaro were in fact brother and sister, jealously would have quickly been her assumption as being the driving force behind Kanako's questioning - Kanako was clearly digging for dirt, and she had been putting Keitaro head and shoulders above Naru at every opportunity in the context of 'he's too good for her,' but always stopping just short of actually saying so. She always stopped short of making any direct statements about Naru, or the issue of Naru and Keitaro, but her implications were clear. Kitsune did not particularly appreciate listening to Kanako talk down about her close friend, but she had dismissed it as a younger sister being protective of the older brother she idolized. But with Kanako's confession, their conversation up to this point began to paint a whole new picture in Kitsune's mind - there was another feeling that she had caught from Kanako throughout their conversation that she also recognized from the early days of Keitaro's presence in their lives. Something that was reasonably explainable under the guise of Keitaro and Kanako being blood relatives. But now ...

"Listen Kanako. You should understand where Keitaro and Naru are coming from. Keitaro's told us all the long version of how unusual it is even for one of his kind to continue to lead his human life, let alone be mated to a human, and no one appreciates that fact more than Keitaro and Naru themselves, even if Naru doesn't always want to admit it to herself. They've been through trials and tribulations together the likes of which surpass the worst nightmares of most couples, and they've come out of each and every one of them stronger than before," said Kitsune softly as they stopped walking and sat down on a bench. "I don't profess to understand the situation from the point of view of an immortal, or what it means to one of you to love a human. Or what it means for a vampire to love a Lycan for that matter."

Kanako cocked an eyebrow at Kitsune's last words, just the sort of confirmation of her new suspicion that Kitsune had hoped that her deliberate tack-on comment might produce.

"But I do understand happiness within another person. You've made it crystal-clear that you don't like Naru. Believe me, I know that she has her unsavory points. Keitaro knows them quite well himself. But Naru is one of my closest friends, and I care a lot about Keitaro too. They've earned their happiness together if ever a couple did. If as his sister, his friend, his partner, whatever, you really care about him, you should let him have his happiness."

Kanako had more to say, but if she had ever been in doubt that Kitsune was on to the underlying meaning behind her grilling for details about Naru, they were now put to rest. She doubted very much if Kitsune intended to oblige her any further, and she hadn't really thought Keitaro so shallow as to be put off Naru simply because she came to him with some dirt passed on by Naru's friend in any case. If Keitaro and Naru were as really close as Kitsune had been describing to her in such agonizing detail, it was probable that he knew even more about Naru's imperfections than did the Fox. No, it had been more her intention simply to find out more about what sort of person this Naru was, albeit with an emphasis on her sour spots. Right from the get-go Kanako really didn't know what she intended to do regardless of what she learned from Kitsune. It was obvious that Keitaro was deeply in love with Naru and Kanako really did want him to be happy, but at the same time she could not help but astound at Keitaro for the naivety of his notion that an immortal and a human could have a future together. Granted, there was no record, no suspected incidence, nor even rumor of a vampire and a Lycan ever having been lovers with one another, only crude jokes and other bits of humor that sought their laughs through sheer absurdity. However, there were no written rules against it, and Kanako had never let an unwritten - or even written for that matter - social rule stand in the way of her convictions.

"Well, thank you for your time, Kitsune. Talking to you has been helpful for me," Kanako said as she offered Kitsune a handshake. As Kitsune accepted the gesture, Kanako stopped walking. "I hope I've not been too much of a downer."

Kitsune did her best to appear jovial. "Don't worry about it. I understand."

Kanako nodded with a slight smirk and slowly sat down on a rock. Kitsune couldn't tell what Kanako was thinking.

"Anyway, I'm going to stay out for a while, but you should probably head home. I wouldn't want you to miss this marvelous Shinobu breakfast that I keep hearing so much about on my account," Kanako said with a slight wink and a weak but seemingly genuine tone of friendliness.

Kitsune was not sure what to think of the situation, but saw nothing to be gained by continuing the conversation after Kanako's polite move to end it. Bowing, she said in her classic playful manner, "Very well then. Just be home by dawn, OK dear?"

Her light smile widening just noticeably, Kanako gently touched her index and middle fingers to her forehead in a mock salute. Kitsune bowed again, turned away, and began walking home.

"_You've got to be frickin' kidding me ..." _Kitsune thought to herself almost as soon as she was certain the grimace on her face would not be visible to Kanako. If what she suspected was indeed true, and at this point she was at least 90 sure that it was, then this week could end up being something much less than the carefree leave from battle that Keitaro had advertised. Kitsune ended up walking for some time lost in her thoughts before the notion occurred to her that she hadn't realized that they had walked this far.

* * *

Kanako had no idea how long she sat their on that rock with death-like stillness. Underneath her cloak the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed was not visible, she scarcely blinked, and the light of the gibbous moon reflected off the pale skin of her face to make her flesh appear almost ghostly white. At times she had felt like crying, but no tears ever formed in her eyes. She just sat there thinking about everything she'd heard tonight. However inappropriate it may be for both of them, Kitsune had left no room for doubt that Keitaro and Naru were a happy, loving couple. Kanako did indeed wish for Keitaro to be happy, but she of all people knew that happiness could be an illusion. With love of all things, it was quite easy to deceive oneself to preserve what appeared to be happiness. Deep down, surely Keitaro knew that he and Naru as they now existed could not be. Rather frequently, human companions of vampires ended up as easy targets for attrition and spite in conflicts between immortals. Kanako assumed that a similar situation existed for Lycans. No human was a match for an immortal, be they vampire or Lycan, and the enemies that Keitaro and Kanako now fought no doubt already harbored an explicit willingness to take revenge against one of the leaders of the team that had so thoroughly trounced them at the warehouse. In Naru were to be hurt, or far more likely, killed in some utterly horrific manner, it would leave Keitaro an emotional wreck and ill-able to keep himself clear-headed and alive in the sort of combat they expected, to say nothing of keeping him in shape to fulfill their mission. If nothing else, Naru would age, grow old, and eventually die, leaving Keitaro alone again. Granted, Kanako was not invincible and could end up a casualty of war too, but she was a skilled, powerful vampire who was infinitely more capable to taking care of herself against the threat of the foreign vampires than was mere Naru the ordinary human, and she was certainly not going to succumb to the rigors of time and age ...

Kanako was a person who valued awareness, but nevertheless she had long since stopped paying humans any real heed. As such, she almost started when she noticed that the moon was beginning to set. Checking her watch, she saw that she only had a couple more hours of darkness. Stirring herself, standing up and stretching her arms, it was only after she turned her head in the direction of the Hinata apartments did she notice the two pairs of eyes that were very un-subtly watching her from that very direction.

* * *

The two men had been out drinking all night. They were the very definition of the cocky, young, self-proclaimed chick-magnets who had also spent most of the night learning that 'chicks' did not seem to share the impression that they had of themselves. As their blood alcohol level increased and their inhibitions decreased, they had grown increasingly indignant of this fact. Less than an hour ago in fact they'd been rudely ejected from the bar in which they'd been trying their luck after the bouncers made known their disapproval of the pair's attempt to 'prove' their status of studlyness by force to was ended up being the last woman at the bar that they propositioned. They had spent the time since then wandering aimlessly, cursing the bouncers who had thrown them out of their night's haunt, but more so cursing the women of this area for 'being blind as bats' and 'not knowing a real man when one came right up to them and grabbed their ass.' Then they had noticed a pale and somehow odd, but small-framed and very attractive young woman sitting by herself in the middle of nowhere in particular.

"Boy, there's a sight for sore eyes," one of the men said to the other as Kanako walked right past them without batting an eye. Both men fell in behind her as she continued past them in silence.

"Hey, come on young lovely, that was a compliment," said the other.

Still no reply or even any sign that Kanako was aware of their presence at all.

"Hey, no need for the cold shoulder there, missy. I assure you we're worth your time," said the first, putting his hand on her shoulder and attempting to pull her to a stop.

In her first acknowledgement of their existence, Kanako batted his hand off her shoulder without turning around or slowing down.

"Fuck off, losers. I'm so not in the mood," she said in a quiet and soft voice, one that was seemed all wrong for the words they spoke.

The two men were, it seemed, were so not in the mood to be rejected again. Particularly when there were no bouncers around. The first man grabbed Kanako's shoulders while the second swept her feet forward, so that Kanako feel to her back, right between them.

Kanako allowed herself to fall. Although her own blood was fast rising to boil, she decided to give these humans one last chance at life. She made no attempt to get up as she spoke.

"Now that you have made clear your intent to cause me physical harm, I should remind you that I would be within my legal rights to permanently remove the two of you as a menace to the female gender where you now stand. I'll say this only once more; fuck off losers, I'm so not in the mood."

The soft voice Kanako used was hardly intimidating, and the combination of alcohol and arousal were not likely to allow the men to heed the seemingly idle warning anyway. Both of them kneeled down beside her.

"Alright then, how about if we treat you to dinner? You're looking a little pale in the flesh there," the second man said, looking to the first and winking.

"Yeah, you look like you need more red meat in your diet," the first man said with a chuckle.

"Will you at least let us _feed_ you?" Said the second man, unzipping and rezipping his zipper a couple times for the sound effect.

Kanako's rising temper boiled over. With speed that was fast even for her kind, her arms shot out and grabbed both men's crotches and squeezed with the strength of an industrial vice. The pain that jolted through the two men choked what should have been a mighty scream into something silent. She let them feel it for a full second before, still holding him by the crotch, she flung the man to her right over the top of her and slammed him onto his companion. Never loosening her grip one bit and holding them in a crude pile on top one another, she slowly writhed herself upright and came to straddle the two men in another of her actions that might have been erotic under different circumstances. Kanako rather enjoyed the look of horror that spread over the look of agony on their faces as her eyes glowed over icy-blue and she opened her mouth widely as she spoke so as to allow them a clear view of her fangs.

"Well now that you mention it," she began, seductively drawing her face closer to theirs and running her tongue down the front length of her left fang, _"I did miss dinner ..."_

Neither man got out so much as a yelp.


	28. This Takes Me Back

Keitaro stayed in bed with Naru until she fell asleep, and had then carefully excused himself to his own room, where he got dressed again. Once dressed, Keitaro went to Kanako's room and found that she was not there. Not finding her anywhere downstairs either, he then took a short walk to the nearest payphone and called the watch officers of both his Den and Gennai's headquarters to make sure that there had been no new developments that would require his and Kanako's immediate presence. Both times he was told that things still seemed likely to hold to the original time estimate.

* * *

It was when Keitaro returned from making his calls that he first noticed that Kitsune's door was open and that she too was not home. He quickly figured that Kitsune must have taken Kanako out with the hopes of having some fun and breaking the ice a little. He had thought about what Naru had said, and while he still thought her jealousy accusation against Kanako was absurd, he did have to admit that Kanako had not exactly come across as outgoing thus far. Kitsune was loathe to coexist with someone who had not at least proven privately to The Fox herself that he or she was capable of having a good time. Keitaro smiled at the thought. He suspected that it had been a long time since Kanako had been around someone like Kitsune. He became curious to hear from both of them what each thought of the other after this night. He had not been toying with those thoughts for too long when Kitsune returned. Keitaro had wound up swinging softly on the swing bench on the front porch by then.

"Good morning, Kitsune," Keitaro said once Kitsune was within range of normal speaking voice.

"Right. Good morning to you too," she said back.

Keitaro then frowned slightly, and looked past Kitsune. "Is Kanako with you?"

Kitsune's expression became something of a cross between amusement and concern at his question. "Well, she was earlier, but ... we sort of went our separate directions a couple hours ago."

Keitaro cocked an eyebrow. "What? Why? Did she say where she was going?"

Kitsune just shook her head.

"Is something wrong? I assumed that you had taken her out to try and wrestle a little more good-time spirit out of her."

Kitsune smiled and yawned. "No, nothing's wrong ... I was just getting tired and suggested that we head home, and Kanako said that there was somewhere she wanted to go first and that she'd be back later."

Keitaro regarded her for a moment, then grinned very weakly out of the corner of his mouth. "You're not as good a liar as you used to be, old friend."

Kitsune visibly slumped a little at Keitaro's calling of her bluff.

"Is there anything I should know?" Keitaro said, in a tone that was still friendly but was growing more serious.

Kitsune sighed in defeat and walked over to the bench. Keitaro stopped swinging and Kitsune sat down next to him. Keitaro also sighed, put his hand on his forehead and leaned backwards as Kitsune sat down.

"I thought bringing Kanako here would be fun. My friends could all meet my sister, she could meet them and we could all have a little fun together. Looks like my idea is zero for two so far."

Kitsune turned to look at him and frowned. Putting her hand on his shoulder, she gently but firmly pulled him back upright. Keitaro seemed slightly surprised by this, and looked at her expectantly.

"It's not like that, Keitaro. I'm sorry if I've given you the wrong impression."

Keitaro nodded lightly.

"No one dislikes your sister, least of all me. I can certainly vouch for Shinobu and Suu as thinking fondly of her. I mean, come on, all you had to do was say that Kanako was your sister and Shinobu especially was sold on her," she said with a smile, a wink and a friendly nudge.

Keitaro could not help but smile back and let out a weak chuckle. "Alright then, so what's going on?"

"What makes you so sure anything is going on?"

"Naru's got this notion that Kanako doesn't like her. And she also thinks that Kanako has some bizarre little crush on me. She told me these things barely a few hours ago and now here you are obviously not telling me something after spending some time with Kanako. Whatever's going on, I'd like to know about it. This little group of ours doesn't exactly have the best track record for misunderstandings. This week is supposed to be a vacation and if there's something going on that is going to spoil it, I'd like to knock it out."

Kitsune had barely avoided cringing visibly after Keitaro's first two sentences. When he had finished talking, she sucked in a deep breath and was obviously unsure of whether or not she was doing the right thing as she replied.

"Um ... Keitaro?"

"Yes?"

"Kanako ... well ... she _does _have a crush on you."

Keitaro's expression did not change but he froze, as one does when they have absolutely no idea what to think of what they just heard.

"And I'm afraid she definitely doesn't like Naru because of that. She's got jealousy written all over her."

"Damn it, not you too. What on earth are you talking about, Kitsune? Did neither of you hear me when I introduced her as my sister?" Keitaro said with exasperation bordering on anger thick in his voice.

"But she isn't really your sister, right? Not by blood?"

Keitaro opened his mouth to speak but Kitsune interrupted him.

"I understand that she's just your sister in your eyes. I swear I'm not accusing you of disloyalty to Naru. But the fact that you consider her your sister is a choice you've made based on how you were raised, not an issue of biology. It has nothing to do with you if she has made a different choice on the matter. I'm not trying to offend you, but you said you wanted to know what was going on, so I'm telling you."

Keitaro's rapidly rising irritation seemed to reverse itself at Kitsune's disarming words. He took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry, Kitsune. I didn't mean to get angry with you," Keitaro said softly.

"It's alright. I understand."

"I myself have been guilty in the past of jumping to conclusions, but I'm beginning to get the terrible feeling that my good intentions in bringing Kanako here are going to backfire messily," Keitaro said with another sigh.

Kitsune did her best to smile soothingly, although she wondered if Keitaro was also keen to the fact that she most definitely shared his concern. Nevertheless, she offered him a mischievous smile, and it was not entirely forced.

"You just deal with Naru. Leave Kanako to me," The Fox said with as much flair as she could muster.

Keitaro again fixed his eyes on her. He appreciated both Kitsune's well-meant attempt to cheer him up and her no doubt sincere intention to assist in the matter. However, in the past, virtually anytime Kitsune had entered herself into a situation of this sort, things had come off the worse for it. Granted, Kitsune, like the rest of them, was a very different person now than she was then, but Keitaro _really _did not want Kitsune subjecting Kanako to the sort of antagonizations that she had once inflicted upon him.

"Please be nice, Kitsune. This is most definitely not the scenario for your antics of old. Whatever the underlying reason may be, I'll be the first to admit that I've always been something of a touchy subject for Kanako. I want this week to be pleasant for her too, so please don't add any fuel to the fire, alright?"

Kitsune feigned indignance. "Just what are you implying, huh? That I mean to stir up trouble?"

Keitaro just gave her a look that clearly sounded an affirmative.

Kitsune smiled reassuringly, and in what was still something of a rarity for her, there was no sign of mischief behind it. "Don't worry, Keitaro. I just want to help, no jokes, no pranks this time. I promise."

It seemed to Kitsune that Keitaro took a moment to accept her promise, but he quickly smiled back at her and nodded his head.

"Thanks, Kits. I appreciate it. I suppose if anyone can bring pleasantness to an unpleasant situation, it's you."

Kitsune blushed very slightly. "Aww, you called me 'Kits.' That's real cute. I like it." She leaned over and gave him a light peck on the forehead as she stood up.

Keitaro's smile widened as he gave The Fox a hearty pat to her side. "You don't have to leave. I'm quickly discovering that this graveyard schedule I'm on makes for some lonely hours, particularly if Kanako's not around. I wouldn't mind the company."

Kitsune smiled, yawned, and sat back down. "Well, I was telling the truth when I said that I was getting sleepy. I'll stick around for a little while though."

* * *

Kitsune did stick around for a while, but it was still several hours after she went to bed before Kanako returned. As she came into view the moonlight reflecting off her dark clothes and pale white skin gave her a ghostly appearance that was both attractive and frightening at the same time. Keitaro had allowed himself to sink into something of a trance as he had sat there on the bench waiting for her, but as she got closer he pulled himself out of it.

"Good evening to you, brother," Kanako said quietly as she walked up the stairs.

"And to you, Kanako," replied Keitaro. "Where on earth have you been? It gets mighty lonely around here when everyone's asleep," he added with a playful wink.

"I'm sorry, Keitaro. I went for a walk while you were ... with Naru ... and I suppose I lost track of time."

"Yeah, spending time with Kitsune can do that to you, I know."

Kanako almost seemed to do a double take when Keitaro mentioned Kitsune. Keitaro couldn't help but let out a chuckle.

"I'm just teasing you Kanako," he said. "Anyway, the sun will be up soon, but we've still got a while before anyone else is up. Until then it's just you and me. What do you wanna do?"

Kanako thought for a moment, and then, with an only just barely detectable hint of hesitation that Keitaro in fact missed, said, "Well ... it's been ages since I've been in a hot spring."

Keitaro smiled heartily. "That's sounds like a great idea."

* * *

Being that his room was closer and that he'd taken to keeping a 'hot spring' bag at the ready as a matter of habit, Keitaro made it down to the hot springs ahead of Kanako. Setting the back down on a rock and taking out his towel, he spread the towel over the top of the bag and took off his robe. He was wearing a pair of shorts underneath.

"_I should have invited everyone here first thing when Kanako and I got here," _he thought to himself as he lowered himself into the water and was instantly reminded of its extraordinary relaxation properties. Settling in up to his chest, he leaned back against the side of the spring, put his hands behind his head, closed his eyes and let out a deep breath.

He soaked for perhaps 5 minutes before Kanako arrived. Keitaro did not open his eyes, but smiled as her listened to her footsteps drawing closer. Only when she stopped just in front of where he was did he open his eyes and look at her. She smiled lightly back at him and dropped her robe. Keitaro didn't have much time to react to the fact that she had nothing on underneath the robe before she slid into the water beside him.

His immediate reactions were much less than they had been that time in the guest quarters and Gennai's place, but Keitaro nevertheless blushed quite visibly and chuckled lightly as he looked away until Kanako was fully in the water.

"I forgot what a little nudist I have for a sister," Keitaro said playfully but without returning his gaze in her direction.

Kanako returned a smile that had a somewhat different sort of playfulness behind it. "Nudity is the body's natural state," she replied, her tone matching her smile. "I thought you Lycans were all about the natural."

"You could say that weGAHH!" Keitaro's startled yelp cut off his reply. Kanako had been sliding closer to him all the while that Keitaro hadn't been looking, and now she snaked her arms around his chest and ran her fingers between his ribs.

"Kanako, what are you ...?"

"Geez Keitaro, I thought I was the one in need of relaxation. How can you be so steady in the heat of battle and so jumpy in such times of peace and quiet?" Kanako spoke in an almost mildly scolding tone. Gently but firmly, she then pulled Keitaro away from the edge of the spring and turned him so that his back was facing her. Keitaro did not resist but clearly tensed up.

"Wait a minute, wha .." Keitaro stammered.

"Please ... just relax ..." she interrupted again, this time in a remarkably soothing voice, and she began to lightly rub - almost tickle - his back.

Keitaro was beginning to blush again, and although he had the mind to protest, this time the feeling of Kanako's fingers on his skin drained any energy with which he might have protested right out of him. For just a few moments, he allowed his mind to be free of objections. By the time they tried to come back, some almost supernatural soothing sensation being transmitted through Kanako's light touch gently extinguished them. He smiled. _"Just like old times ..." _he thought. _"I really don't know why I get so jumpy when Kanako gets a little touchy-feely. She has always been very affectionate with me. So what if she's quick to pick up where she left off ..."_

Kanako, on the other hand, despite her supremely calm exterior demeanor and her lecture on relaxation, was twisting herself into knots on the inside. This time, her testing of Keitaro's reactions was very deliberate, and once again, she was gravely discouraged by the results.

"_You'd think that my fingers were cast from ice the way he reacts when I touch him," _ranted silently to herself as her fingers continued to play across Keitaro's back. She sat with that thought for a short while before the rest of her thoughts began to fire. _"He really is infatuated with that human, isn't he? He's got this lovely little fantasy that he's living here that doesn't seem to recognize that he's not human anymore. This would never have happened if he'd been bitten by a vampire instead. Rikyo, it seems, can be too kind for the good of his own people. Gennai is no tyrant but he'd have made Keitaro accept the reality of being an immortal if he had to write it down, stick it in a bottle and shove it down his throat."_

Kanako was not aware of the fact that the subtle signs of discomfort had returned to Keitaro's demeanor as her inner monologue got louder within the confines of her own skull.

"_One way or another, sooner or later, this is going to end badly for him. Even if this war ends happily ever after and Keitaro and his human bride ride off into the sunset, in another 30 or 40 years Naru will be some hideous old hag who could only drag Keitaro down with her. Or even worse, if something happens to her during the course of the war ... that could end up costing him his own life as well. Or what if she or his friends try to bring human authorities into this somehow? Haruka I'm sure knows better, but what about the rest of them? Dammit, there are _reasons _why humans and immortals do not interact!"_

"Kanako?"

"_Well, it's in everyone's best interest - Keitaro's, mine, Naru's, and everyone else's - that someone break Keitaro into the fact that his human life of old is over and that he has to accept the fact that his destiny has been rewritten, whether he likes it or not. It might as well be me."_

"Kanako?"

"_He may get angry with me at first, and it may tear my heart out, but in the end, he will thank me, and maybe, just maybe, I can convince him that the immortal who could keep him happy forever and ever is me. I ..."_

"KANAKO ..."

It took Keitaro raising his voice to snap her out of her thoughts. Her fingers stopped moving and Keitaro turned at the waist to look at her, putting his own hand on his back and rubbing it.

"If you're trying to make me appreciate your lighter touches, you've made your point," he said in a voice that was still playful and friendly, but his eyebrows were cocked in such a way that said something to the effect of, "what the heck was that?"

Kanako looked down at his back where his hand was rubbing it just in time to see some light bruises in the rough shape of her hands finish healing. Embarrassed, she herself blushed slightly and she looked slightly away to the side.

"I'm sorry, brother. I ..."

"Please, call me Keitaro. I've got this issue around here with no one calling me by my name," Keitaro said with a light chuckle.

Kanako's blush faded and she had a blank look on her face for a moment, then she just barely suppressed her urge to laugh out loud at the way she'd managed to turn the tables on herself so ingloriously just now. Her spirits also took a great boost by virtue of the fact that Keitaro now seemed to be inviting her to continue rubbing his back and that he was no longer radiating discomfort. Granted, it was a drop in the bucket towards her ultimate goal, but the first small hint of possible success was all her morale really needed for the time being.

"_Ah well," _her thoughts began again as she smiled and again set about gently rubbing Keitaro's back. _"I suppose the longest of journeys always begin with a small step. Though one would hope that the pace picks up after a short while ..."_

Keitaro and Kanako stayed in the hot spring together until the first light of morning signaled the imminent rising of the sun. Keitaro had accompanied Kanako to her room and bid her a goodnight before retiring to his own room.

* * *

As she usually was, Shinobu was the first one up. She could easily fulfill her breakfast-making duties while sleeping in at least half an hour later than she typically did, but true to her colors she liked to put a little extra pride into her work. She dressed herself with much of her usual good cheer and quietly left her room.

Just before Shinobu started down the stairs, she stopped. On the rare occasions when someone had a guest over for the night - it had only ever really been Kitsune when she had Koan over for the night, and given his work routine that was not common - she had always gone the extra mile for them and asked the guest if there was anything special they'd like for breakfast. Koan had never made a special request, and given that there likely wasn't anything that she could make for Kanako, Shinobu didn't really know what she could do for her, but she nevertheless decided to at least drop in and say Hi if she was still awake.

Knocking softly a few times on the door to Kanako's room, Shinobu waited quietly for a response. Nothing. She knocked softly again, and once again there was no response.

"Kanako? Are you awake? I was just .." Shinobu began as she cracked the door open, but she stopped speaking when she saw that Kanako was not in there. She opened the door the rest of the way and looked around. Kanako's bedroll was not even rolled out. Shinobu was puzzled, but saw no cause for worry. She went about her business of making breakfast.

* * *

Breakfast was no more or less an affair that it always was, save for the fact that Keitaro wasn't there. Everyone was already finding odd to have Keitaro around but on such an opposite schedule. The subject of Kanako was also brought up. Haruka was inwardly surprised to find that most everyone's first impression of Kanako was, at worst, on the positive side of neutral. Shinobu and Suu in particular seemed to like her a lot. Only Naru seemed hesitant when she said that she 'was pleased to meet her,' the way one does when they don't want to be the lone rain cloud over a sunny day. Motoko openly said that there was something about Kanako that troubled her, but that she couldn't put her finger on it. However, she did say that Kanako seemed amiable enough. Haruka had just cocked an eyebrow but, in the spirit of her and Kanako's impromptu agreement, she restrained herself from doing or saying anything else.

"You know, does anyone know if she stayed somewhere else tonight?" Asked Shinobu, as the subject of Kanako seemed on it's way out.

"What?" Was Naru's response to the question.

"It's just that ... I stopped by her room this morning before I came downstairs to make breakfast and she wasn't there."

"Is Keitaro still here?"

Shinobu paused a moment and then said, "I didn't check."

Naru's facial expression became one of sudden concern. "You don't think they got called away during the night, do you?" She asked no one in particular.

"It hardly seems like Keitaro to leave without so much as letter," interjected Motoko.

"I can't vouch for Kanako, but I know that Keitaro was here at least as of early this morning. I spoke with him," offered Kitsune.

"Well there's a simple way to put this question to rest. I'll go see," Naru said, as she stood up and pushed her chair in.

* * *

Keitaro slowly awoke to the sensation that he was being watched. He happened to be facing away from his door and he sat up and shook his head a few times. As he sat up, he felt his blanket pull taut along its full length. Keitaro was familiar with this feeling in his blanket. Naru had a way of coiling herself up in it in her sleep. Naru? He looked as his watch. It was after 9am. Why was she in bed? Then he noticed the scent. He knew Naru's smell backwards and forwards, and this wasn't it. His heart skipped a beat as his memory matched the new scent to its owner. Turning around with an expression of disbelief on his face, he pulled back the blanket to the shoulder level and revealed Kanako's sleeping form - naked, it seemed, going by the lack of any straps on her shoulder, and more significantly going by the small pile of female clothing that sat just next to his bedroll. But the thing that quickened Keitaro's heart rate the most was not who was in his bed. It was who was standing in his doorway. Only a moment after he'd fully taken in the image of Kanako's face he noticed the source of the sensation that had awoken him in the first place. Naru stood there in his doorway, her mouth agape and her face a slightly more pale shade than usual. There was no anger on her face, just stunned disbelief. For a moment, the two stared into each other's eyes without a sound. Then tears began to form just visibly in Naru's eyes.

"Na ... Na ... no ... I ... this isn't ..." Keitaro stammered. But both his words and, he would have guessed, his heart stopped when a tear fell from Naru's eye to the floor.

"Keitaro ..." Naru said softly, her voice painfully choked.

Keitaro had not felt this frozen by absolute dread in a very long time. "Na ... Naru ... I swear ... I don't ... I didn't ... she ..."

But Naru just slowly turned around in silence, and began to walk away. Keitaro remained frozen for a few seconds and then fumbled out from under his blanket. His adrenaline surge permitted him to move.

"Naru ... please wait," he said, as he caught up a few paces outside his room to her and put his hand on her shoulder. Naru stopped walking, but didn't move or speak.

Once again Keitaro's coherency was built solely on adrenaline. "Naru .. I swear, I don't know what she's doing there. She wasn't there when I went to bed. I promise, I ..."

"Not right now, Keitaro. Not right now. We'll talk later, OK?" Naru spoke in a whisper, and the fact that she was fighting back more tears was evident. It killed whatever energy his adrenaline had offered. He weakly lifted his hand off her shoulder and she started walking away again. She disappeared up the stairs.

Keitaro somberly closed the door behind him as he stumbled back into his room. He was shaking a little. He looked over to where Kanako was still sleeping with a blank expression. He was just too stunned - or moreover, fearful of the night to come - to feel anything towards Kanako. Slowly, rather numbly, he went into his closet and pulled out his spare futon.


	29. Friction and a Hasty Departure

Naru surprised everyone at the table when, after being gone for a nearly half an hour, she slowly meandered back into the kitchen looking painfully distraught. She claimed a sudden stomach bug as her excuse for taking permanent leave from the breakfast table to seal herself up in her room. Her physical appearance supported her claim, but the fact that she didn't even seem to notice Shinobu's sudden look of alarm _(to which Naru would have normally sworn that the young cook's food was not to blame)_ did not. Far more important than that though was the fact that this had come about after she had been gone from the table for nearly 20 minutes to 'check on Keitaro' beforehand. Kitsune in particular, who knew more about the potential for trouble relating to Keitaro and Kanako than the others, was immediately concerned. Haruka and Motoko also seemed to sense that something was very wrong and that it had nothing to do with a 'stomach bug' and also suspected that it must have something to do with Kanako. However, no one challenged Naru on the spot, and she was allowed to retreat without comment.

* * *

Although she was not really crying, as Naru sat on the floor in her room tears slowly but steadily leaked from her eyes. The sense of overwhelming disbelief that she had felt when she had first seen Keitaro and Kanako in bed together had faded in intensity, and now what might almost be described as clinical shock had eroded Naru's ability to feel anything and a sort of surreal numbness enveloped her.

* * *

In his own room, Keitaro was perhaps having an even worse time. The initial shield of shock the he himself had experienced had worn off, and he was now experiencing something very much like that which he'd felt many times in the distant past when a similar circumstance had put him in an awkward position with Naru. Well, like that, multiplied a hundred fold. At the same time, he was totally at a loss for how to react to Kanako. It had only been the previous night that Kitsune had dropped the bombshell on him that the girl whom he'd never thought of as anything but a sister now thought of him as a love interest. Indeed, had he not known that, he himself wouldn't have thought too much of Kanako's presence in his bed - when they had lived together she had often slept in his bed with him, and after the previous night in the hot spring, Keitaro had already made himself less jumpy at Kanako engaging in the sort of physical affections that he had known from her since early childhood. He would also have been less concerned even at Naru's reaction. However, knowing what he knew now, he knew that he would be hard pressed to convince Naru that it was nothing more than an affectionate sister when he himself knew otherwise. With the weight of all that on his back, it's not surprising that Keitaro had trouble getting back to sleep.

* * *

As the morning dragged on into afternoon and early evening, everyone else had inevitably caught the notion that something was amiss, either from the demeanors of Kitsune, Haruka or Motoko, or from Naru's continued self-confinement in her room without so much as a peep - no one had ever known her to do that when she was simply sick, nor for any other reason for that matter, than when something had gone awry with Keitaro. No one had gone to Naru, Keitaro, or Kanako's room though. In what might have been the first conscious and deliberate execution of the specific thought within her head ever, Kitsune thought that her meddling might exacerbate the situation at this point, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. It was not until near dinnertime - and sundown - that everyone began to seriously worry. Naru had not come down for lunch either, and the tray that Shinobu had left for her outside her door had hardly been touched. Also, Keitaro and Kanako would be up soon ...

* * *

"Keitaro? Are you awake yet?" Asked Kitsune, as she gently rapped on his door. She had preempted anyone else from going upstairs by doing so herself the moment the suggestion that someone should do so was made. Kitsune figured that whether they'd reached the conclusion on their own or whether Haruka or Motoko had openly said something to them, everyone probably suspected that Kanako must have something to do with whatever was going on. Kitsune certainly knew that she was, and The Fox hoped to contain the situation and prevent things from getting ugly. If indeed something had happened, Kitsune wanted to try and be the proxy between the potential factions. As she stood silently awaiting a response, she almost chuckled aloud to herself. She was not the merciless troublemaker that she used to be, but nevertheless the irony of her of all people being the one to try and soothe tensions rather than play them did not go unappreciated.

Getting no answer after about 30 seconds, Kitsune knocked lightly again. "Kei .."

She stopped talking when she heard the sound of Keitaro's door being unlocked. As the door opened, it took every ounce of her self-control not to recoil in surprise as a naked Kanako, covered only by Keitaro's blanket, answered his door.

"Keitaro is still asleep. Is there something I can help you with?" Kanako said, quite nonchalantly.

"Uh ... n ... no ..." Kitsune said, hoping that her voice didn't reveal to Kanako as much about how she was feeling at that precise moment as she thought it did. Kitsune did notice though that Keitaro was indeed still sleeping in another bed roll. "I uh, was just coming to see if Keitaro would be joining us for dinner ... but I guess this is a no."

Kanako smiled, again in a very nonchalant manner. "I'll send him your way when he wakes up."

Kitsune took the hint. "Well, I hope to see the both of you come out from hiding sometime tonight, but for now I'll leave you be. See you around."

Kitsune bowed slightly to Kanako and Kanako returned a two-fingered salute and a smile, and then Kitsune started walking away. When she heard Keitaro's door close behind her, she turned around to make sure that Kanako was indeed back inside the room, and then Kitsune quickly but quietly turned on her heels and went to Naru's room.

* * *

"Naru? If you're awake, please talk to me. It's important." Kitsune said, loud enough to hopefully wake anyone who might be sleeping, but not so loud as to draw the attention of anyone downstairs.

After a few moments without a response, Kitsune knocked again, as hard as she dared against her desire not to garner the attention of the others. "Naru, this is important. that's something you really ought to know."

Still no response.

"Naru, I'm coming in," Kitsune said, and turned the doorknob. It was locked. Kitsune huffed as she took a pen out of her pocket and pulled out the ink tube with her teeth. Sticking it in the hole in the doorknob, she began to feel around for the lock release. Finding it, she pushed it in and heard the satisfying sound of the lock popping open. Without her usual grin of success, she again began to turn the doorknob.

"Not right now, Kitsune. Please," came a quiet voice from inside the room. Kitsune stopped turning the doorknob. "I'm sorry. I need to talk to Keitaro first. Please, I don't want to talk to anyone else right now."

Kitsune hesitated for a moment, then with sudden resolve, said "Naru, there is something that you really oughta know ..." and began to open the door.

She had barely opened the door a crack before her light push was met with a very strong counter push from the inside, closing the door again almost violently and giving Kitsune's hand a painful twist in the process. As Kitsune recoiled and let go of the door, Naru's voice spoke up again in a louder and much less calm tone.

"I SAID not right now, Kitsune! PLEASE don't press me right now! I promise I'll talk to you later, but right now PLEASE just give me my space!"

Although it had been quite a long time since she'd seen her old friend like this, Kitsune still had more than ample recollection of the fact that at such times it was pretty well impossible to make any headway with Naru about anything, let alone the issue that brought on her mood. Rubbing her wrist, she backed away from the door, turned around and slowly started walking downstairs.

"_Damn it, Naru, don't start up your old bullshit games again," _Kitsune thought as she walked. _"I thought you'd learned your lesson by now not to take everything you see at face value ... with Keitaro of all people."_

_

* * *

_

Meanwhile, Kanako was putting her clothes back on and rolling up Keitaro's bedroll, and while she was doing so Keitaro began to stir. Even before he opened his eyes his distress was plain to be seen.

"_I'm sorry, brother, for causing you this pain. Please understand, I do this for your own good. I promise you, you will thank me in the end," _ Kanako thought, as her eyes met with Keitaro's as the latter finally opened them. "Good morning, Keitaro," she said, in a friendly but somewhat reserved voice.

Keitaro shook his head a couple times as though he were trying to confirm whether or not his most recent memories were real or just a bad dream. Forced to accept that they were real, he took a deep breath before speaking.

"Kanako, what on earth are you doing?" He said softly.

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. Why did you crawl into my bed? Naked, no less? What the hell are you trying to do?"

Kanako pretended to think for a moment, and then said, "I guess it's a vampire thing. When we have an ally with whom we want to maintain a relationship throughout our immortality, we feel it's best to get as close to them as possible. You and I are both field officers for our respective societies, and with this crisis bringing my kind and yours closer together we will no doubt be working together many times in the centuries to come. Our leaders place great faith in our ability to achieve our goals. If you and I are to bear such responsibility together, then we will have to know and understand one another as intimately as possible to maximize our cooperative effectiveness."

Keitaro cocked an eyebrow as he pulled himself out of bed, and shook his head slightly.

Kanako regarded his response. "You don't think that makes sense?" She asked, in a genuinely quizzical manner.

"It's not that that doesn't make sense, Kanako, but I don't see how sleeping in the same bed with no clothes on has any bearing on our ability to serve together in war and complete our mission." Keitaro replied with a sigh. Slowly working himself out of bed and getting out some fresh clothes and a towel, he continued. "You can't just climb naked into bed with someone on a whim like that. Naru has a tendency to overreact to things without getting the whole story first, and she's already stressing about me going off into battle again. This sort of extra provocation is something that we really don't need right now."

Kanako cocked an eyebrow. "You marching off to battle and risking life and limb she copes with, you getting a little close to your teammate is what pushes her over the edge?"

"Those are two different issues."

"Really? Why is that?"

"She understands that I do not have a choice when it comes to fulfilling my duties to my Den, nor any professional relationships that go with them. But I'm definitely still in control of my personal relationships, and you better believe she knows that too, and she knows that I know it."

Kanako looked away from him and downward. "So you don't want a personal relationship with me? Am I nothing to you but a partner in war?"

Keitaro sighed again. "That's not at all what I said, and I think you know that it's not what I meant either. But this is not an appropriate avenue for our personal relationship to take. First and foremost, as I'm sure you have to have figured out by now, I'm already in a relationship with Naru. And secondly, you're my sister!"

Kanako closed her eyes for a moment at the last words in Keitaro's sentence.

"Well anyway, listen, I'm not in the mood to argue. But please, don't ever pull something like this again. In the meantime, would you kindly excuse me for the time being? I'll see you downstairs later tonight." Keitaro said, motioning towards the door with a nod of his head as he finished talking.

Kanako put on another of her blank expressions and simply nodded. "Alright. See you later."

With those words, she quietly exited Keitaro's room, closing the door behind her. Standing just outside his door for a moment, she did a quick analysis of the result of her first move. _"I was expecting him to be angry, but he didn't seem to be. I guess that's good," _she thought to herself. _"In either case, let's not wait for the rebound. Time to pull out the stops."_

_

* * *

_

Her resolve was wavering just a little after seeing the effect her plan was having on Keitaro, but she nevertheless clenched her teeth resolutely and she returned to her room. When she got there, she opened up her laptop, activated her encryptions, and connected to Gennai's network. She paged one of her friends whom she knew was still at headquarters. It only took a few minutes for a reply to arrive.

"Good evening to you too, Kanako. What are you doing at the office? I thought you were on vacation!" The text scrolled across her screen.

Kanako smiled a little. "More like a mission of a different sort than a vacation, really. But speaking of work, remember that time Gennai wanted you to go to that function with those associates of his up in Hokkaido and I saved your ass by finding that 'volunteer' from down south to go in your place?"

"Haha, of course I remember. I still owe you for that one."

"Indeed you do. And it just so happens that you might just be able to pay me back now."

"Really? Well, it'd be nice not to owe my soul to the likes of you anymore. What can I do for you?"

"Do me a favor and go check and see if those codebreakers or interrogators have gotten anything even semi-useful yet."

"Is that all I have to do? It's not like you to let anyone off a debt so easily, least of all me."

"As a matter of fact, if you do that and one other thing for me, I might just let you call it even."

"Hang on a minute while I do a little investigating."

* * *

Kitsune was glad that she had assumed that enough of her brief 'conversation' with Naru had been heard to assure the others that at least someone upstairs was awake. It had been her first idea to simply tell everyone that Naru, Keitaro and Kanako were all still asleep. As it was, she had been able to pass with the explanation that Naru's illness had made her a bit cranky to her effort to convince Naru to come down and eat something. Kitsune almost visibly flinched when Suu first started talking about the experiments she was hoping to perform on Kanako before she left, but the nature of those experiments of which she spoke prevented anyone from taking the subject too seriously, and no one, not even Haruka, seemed inclined to harden the mood. Dinner had ended, and most of its participants dispersed, by the time Keitaro made it downstairs. By then, Shinobu was still doing the dishes and Haruka was working on some paperwork from her tea shop at the table. No one else was around. Haruka looked up at Keitaro as he walked over to the table. Haruka was seated at the end of the table, and Keitaro took the seat on the side of the table nearest to her. She smiled thinly as he sat down.

"Good morning," she said simply.

Keitaro was still somewhat visibly frazzled. "Don't I wish."

Haruka just nodded and pursed her lips just slightly, as when one is fighting the urge to say something that for whatever reason they would rather not say. Keitaro knew this expression quite well on the face of his aunt.

"It's not entirely Kanako's doing, if that's what you're thinking. In all honesty I'd say it's mostly a bit of flashback for Naru and myself - her for her old reflexive reactivity and me for my old failure to come up with a satisfactory explanation in a timely fashion."

Haruka cocked an eyebrow. "And Kanako is involved with that somehow? Do I even want to know?"

Though he certainly did not find the situation at all funny, he could not help but smile and chuckle a little at Haruka's reaction. "It might make things awkward for a day or two for Naru, Kanako and myself, but rest assured I will clean everything by the end of this week."

Haruka sighed slowly. "Same old Kanako, I see ..."

Keitaro frowned slightly. "I was under the impression that the two of you made some sort of rapprochement."

Haruka huffed a little and nodded with another raised eyebrow. "So was I, actually. For just a moment she actually had me convinced that maybe, just maybe, she had learned how to interact with other people smoothly rather than abrasively. But any rapprochement we may or may not have had is destined to be short-lived if she thinks she's just going to waltz in here and turn everyone's lives upside down. I mean, she's been here a couple of days and already made enemies of everyone. That certainly sounds like Old Kanako to me."

She caught Keitaro's look just then, and relented a little. "OK, Suu is infatuated with her because she wants a vampire to play with to compliment her werewolf experiments, and Shinobu would probably love anyone if you told her they were related to you, and you could introduce Mutsumi to a serial child killer and she'd probably still just smile and shake his hand. But Motoko seems a little put off by her, Kitsune has been acting weird around her too, and surely you don't need me to tell you that she rubs Naru the wrong way. Plus ..."

She paused a moment for effect and waited for Keitaro to give her the look that said 'Plus what?'

"The one thing that I never doubted about Kanako was that she wanted what was best for you, even if her notion of what that was and how best to achieve it was a little off. But you, Keitaro ... a lesson that to this day I'm not entirely certain that you've learned is that you can be kind to a fault. I know you are fond of Kanako, but you really ought to consider whether or not her presence does you more harm than good. It seems like she's already ..."

Keitaro held up a hand to stop her from continuing.

"First of all, I'll be the first to admit that I myself am beginning to question the wisdom of bringing her here, but bear in mind that regardless of who likes it and who doesn't, the two of us are partners in immortal affairs. So if you were about to suggest that I just ditch Kanako and forget about her for my own good, that's not an option even if I wanted to. And, for the record, I don't want to."

Haruka just absorbed his words in silence.

"Ironically enough, one of my main reasons for bringing her here was the hope that the two of you might indeed make peace with each other. And, since the two of us are likely to be working together for a long time, I thought it would be great if the she could meet and make friends with the other people who are important to me. So much for my good intentions, I know," Keitaro said with a sigh. "But anyway, if we were just to up and leave at this point, it would sort of be the relationship equivalent of leaving the oven on. I am going to try and make things right before we go."

Haruka had the mind to continue the discussion, but then thought better of it. Forcing herself to smile, she said, "well, just try to keep her on a leash, OK? If she causes too much trouble around here, your Den might receive an anonymous tip-off about some enemy vampire spy hiding out at an old inn ..."

Keitaro likewise forced himself to smile, as he was honestly unsure if Haruka was joking or not. "Fair enough."

He and Haruka chit-chatted some small talk for a short while after that, and after he left Haruka alone to finish her work he went into the kitchen to see Shinobu. He helped her finish what little work was left and also bantered with her for a short while. Then, as he walked out of the kitchen, he took a deep breath and went to find Naru.

* * *

While Keitaro was talking to Haruka and Shinobu, Kanako's friend had since returned with the news that their codebreakers hadn't cracked enough of the code to decipher anything coherent yet, and that the information 'gleamed' from the prisoners was at this time fragmented and unverified. Nevertheless, those fragments were enough for Kanako's purposes. At her friends' prompting, she had explained the situation with Keitaro, and her plan for extracting him from it.

"You really can sniff out the strangest problems, you know that Kanako?"

Kanako smirked as she read the reply. "Yeah, well, I don't create them, I just correct them. Now are you clear on what you are to do?"

"Yes."

"Good. See you soon then."

With that last sentence, Kanako disconnected from the network and closed up her computer. Although she was still sorrowful for the hardship she was going to cause Keitaro, she nevertheless couldn't help but feel a little excited as well. In the end, this would end for the better.

* * *

Keitaro hovered hesitantly outside Naru's door. Her light was on and every now and then he could hear the sound of her moving around inside, so he knew she was awake. He figured that she was expecting him to come and talk to her, so he at least wasn't worried about surprising her, but nevertheless he was nervous. He only had a vague recollection of the last time he'd been nervous about talking to Naru. He had for some time been proudly touting to himself how long his and Naru's relationship had been on solid ground, and now that it seems that that ground was not so solid after all and the speed at which it seemed to be crumbling underneath him was cutting his confidence almost down to his pre-Lycan levels. He was not aware of how long he was hovering, but eventually he grasped his resolve and knocked on her door. In the sudden silence that followed, he was dimly aware of the sound of the phone ringing. However, what he was really listening for was anything from within Naru's room. But there was no sound at all from behind her door. Waiting a few moments, he knocked again.

"Naru, it's me."

The silence continued for another few seconds, then Keitaro heard the sound of footsteps from both in and outside Naru's room. A moment later, the door opened. Naru stood there, obviously as uncomfortable as Keitaro was, and for what seemed for the both of them to be a long time, neither said anything.

"You know, this moment could have been avoided if you'd just listened to me in the first place," Keitaro opened with, visibly wrinkling his eyebrows in surprise at how almost irate he sounded. He hadn't meant to.

Naru didn't seem to know what to make of his words. She opened her mouth to speak, but her eyes darted to the side in the direction of a sudden sound down the hall. Keitaro looked too and saw Haruka walking their way with the phone in her hand. Haruka saw the two of them facing one another and bowed her head slightly as she came within arm's reach of them.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you two, but Keitaro, the phone is for you. I told him that you were busy but he said it was most urgent."

Keitaro closed his eyes and slumped his head. _"Oh man, there's no way my luck can get this bad this fast," _he thought to himself as he took the phone. He knew there was only one call that was likely to fit the bill of 'urgent.'

"Keitaro Urashima here," he said into the phone. Both Haruka and Naru watched as Keitaro listened and nodded for a minute or two, and the closed his eyes and lowered his head again. "Right. We'll be right there."

Both Naru and Haruka, though much more so Naru that Haruka, cringed as Keitaro clicked off the phone. Keitaro let out a short, exasperated chuckle.

"A sudden breakthrough from the interrogation of prisoners. Kanako and I are to report back to headquarters immediately," he rattled out as he shook his head.

The three of them stood there in awkward silence for a few moments before Keitaro simply bowed once to Naru and then again to Haruka.

"Talk about bad timing," he said as he gave Naru a look of anxiety and then turned and began to walk away. "Let me just say in passing that things are not as you seem to think they are and I'll contact you as soon as I can. I'm sorry."

Haruka just watched Keitaro walk away and thus missed Naru's expression turn into something resembling the one that had been on Keitaro's face.

"Kei," she whispered almost silently, but stopped in mid-word as Keitaro disappeared around the corner.

* * *

Haruka persuaded Naru to come downstairs and get something to eat, and they were both seated at the table as Naru just begun to tap into some food when the sound of footsteps sounded from the entryway. Before Haruka could say a word - even if she'd had a word ready to say - Naru dropped her chopsticks and made a beeline for the entryway. Haruka then just got a look of apprehension on her face and followed her.

Keitaro and Kanako were walking briskly for the front door, their large duffel bags throw over their shoulders, when Naru and then Haruka became visible to them.

"Keitaro, wait a sec, will you?" Naru said as she moved to intercept him at the front door.

Keitaro just shook his head as he put his hand on the doorknob. "I'm sorry Naru, but this is a conversation that I do not have time for. You and I will have dinner at that restaurant downtown that you like so much when I get back and talk things over, but for right now, duty calls."

With those words, Keitaro leaned over and gave Naru a quick kiss on the cheek, then opened the front door and walked out. Naru seemed almost as though she hadn't been expecting that kiss, but quickly found herself staring into Kanako's eyes, who closely followed Keitaro to the door but paused for a moment just inside it to share that glance with Naru. Kanako's eyes beamed disdain and defiance at her, but before Naru had a ready response Kanako swiftly strode out the door, closed it behind her, and regained her position at Keitaro's side.

Haruka watched the brief encounter between the two younger women. Even though it had been many years she recognized the look of disdain and defiance on Kanako's face like her own similar expression in the mirror. She then watched Naru stand there seemingly frozen for a minute or two before Naru's expressionless face rose up into anger.

"I'm not hungry, Haruka. Thanks anyway though," she said rather shortly, and then marched back up the stairs.

Haruka watched Naru go and shook her head after she was out of sight. _"Just when you thought it was safe ..." _she thought to herself, and then her mental image returned to that of Kanako's glare towards Naru and Haruka's head turned towards the door. _"Not here to make trouble, my ass ..."_


	30. Pursuit

"_Damn it, we are not going to do this again! Not now!" _Naru thought angrily to herself as she haphazardly tore off the pajamas that she had been wearing and pulled on something a little more appropriate for wearing outside. Naru had had some time to think about it, and had come to realize that it was indeed excruciatingly unlikely that Keitaro would cheat on her, and also that her knee-jerk reaction - the sort of which everyone else and she herself thought that she had outgrown - had done much more than Kanako's actions to make an already unpleasant situation much worse than it had to be. One of the things that had prevented her relationship with Keitaro from advancing without the 'aid' of a near-death experience was this same sort of reacting without allowing Keitaro an opportunity to explain the situation. Granted, she had gotten used to Keitaro not getting himself into situations requiring an explanation in the first place, but nevertheless she was both disappointed and angry with herself for how quickly she'd reverted to her old behavior. She wanted to apologize to Keitaro, and did not want him to be going into battle with his relationship at home weighing in on his mind.

Naru peeked out her door quietly to make sure no one was in the hallway, and satisfied that no one was, she slipped out of her room and snuck over to Suu's room.

* * *

"Come in!" Came the usual cheerful voice when Naru knocked on the door. Naru at the same time let out a sigh of relief that the young engineer was in her room and cringed at the volume she had used to respond. Naru opened the door and stepped inside, closing the door behind her. Suu noticed that Naru was wearing a light jacket.

"Are you going somewhere, Naru?" Suu asked.

"Well ... yes ... actually ... I need your help."

Suu didn't say anything, but just cocked her head to the side in an inquisitive manner.

"Keitaro got called away just now. He and Kanako just walked out the door not 15 minutes ago. But there's something that I really need to say to him and I need you to help me find him."

Suu seemed to frown. "That won't be easy. I already tried hacking into Kanako's computer, but whoever does her security knows what they're doing. Both Kanako and Keitaro really know how not to be tracked when they don't want to be."

Naru was disheartened. Suu thought for a moment and then lit up like a light bulb.

"Wait a minute! Did he take that armor I made him?" Suu asked energetically.

"I don't know. Why?"

Suu grinned mischievously. "I figured that if ever the time should arrive that Keitaro felt the need to use it that we might want to keep tabs on him, so I took the liberty of building small tracking devices into every major component of the armor. They will only emit their signal when pinged by my locator unit, and the locator unit requires both of my thumbprints to use. That way, even if the locator unit should happen to fall into the hands of Keitaro's enemies, they cannot use the tracking devices to find him."

Naru could not have honestly said that she was surprised, but nevertheless she marveled a little at the foresight that this normally carefree and live-for-the-moment girl was capable of.

"Good work, Suu. You truly are a genius."

Suu grinned and made a small curtsey gesture.

"So, would you mind giving me a little demonstration of how your locator works?" Naru asked with a weak smile.

"Not in the least," Suu replied, and she stood up and walked over to her closet, where she produced a small, square device with a small antenna sticking out the top. Touching a button on the back of the device, she then placed both her thumbs on a touchpad just below the small keyboard. As both Suu and Naru watched intently, the screen then loaded up and Suu pressed a button below it that said 'PING ON.' Sure enough, it produced a single, moving blip. Another few keystrokes by Suu changed the screen to a 'you are here, the target is there' format, which showed that Keitaro was already on a train, apparently headed for Tokyo.

Naru soaked this up for a moment, and then said, "Suu ... can you change the settings on this thing to accept my thumbprints too?"

Suu was visibly puzzled by the question. "Of course I can."

* * *

Meanwhile, Haruka and Kitsune had met outside Naru's room at almost the same time, as both had the mind to try and talk some sense into her. A quick exchange of words between them confirmed that their intentions were identical, and with that Kitsune knocked softly on the door. To their complete lack of initial surprise, there was no response. They traded apprehensive looks and then Kitsune knocked again. Nothing but silence from inside. As Kitsune sighed and opened her mouth to plead with Naru to let them in, Haruka just frowned, opened the door and stepped inside.

"Naru, you really need to ..." Haruka began, but stopped in mid-sentence as a visual sweep of the room revealed that Naru was not there. As Kitsune stepped inside too, Haruka turned to her and said, "This can't be good."

Kitsune smiled at her. "Now don't you start jumping to conclusions too. She's probably just confiding in another of the girls."

Haruka didn't buy into Kitsune's optimism. "You're her best friend here. If she was going to confide in someone, wouldn't it have been you?"

Kitsune made as if to speak but then realized that she didn't have a ready response to that turnaround.

"Right. Well let's go make certain one way or another," Haruka said to the stumped Fox.

* * *

Mutsumi and Shinobu were in their rooms when the Naru hunters came knocking. Neither had seen Naru or had any knowledge of her whereabouts. On their way to Suu's room, they passed Motoko in the hallway, who also had not seen Naru. Motoko asked them why they seemed so anxious to find Naru, and when Haruka passed along her theory, Motoko cocked an eyebrow and decided to help them find her.

Even before they got to Suu's door, they could hear the sounds coming from inside her room. There was a thumping sound that sounded either like furniture being moved or someone stomping their feet. More ominous though was the recognizable sound of a muffled voice. It all sounded like struggling when put together. As soon as the sounds were recognized, the three broke into a run and covered the short remaining distance to the door in a couple seconds. Not missing a beat, Motoko drew her sword and Haruka produced her pistol, and then Haruka grabbed the doorknob and pushed herself into the room, her pistol at the ready with Motoko's blade right beside it.

* * *

The sight that met their eyes meant trouble alright, just not the exact sort of trouble they had feared. They had indeed heard the sounds of struggling, but Suu was quite alone in her room. She was tied to a chair and gagged with a T-shirt, and she was thrashing around trying to loosen the ropes and apparently yelling something through her gag. Seeing her armed rescue squad burst through her door, she stopped struggling and seemed to smile at them. Behind her, her window was open and a rope, anchored around one of Suu's machines, ran out of it.

Sheepishly, Haruka holstered her pistol, and together with Kitsune and Motoko they set about freeing their younger ward. Whomever had tied her up had clearly done so hastily, as the knots were not very tight and Suu had probably been on the brink of freeing herself anyway. As Motoko carefully cut away the rope and Kitsune unwrapped it from around the chair, Haruka untied the gag and took it off Suu's head.

"Ptooie!" Exclaimed Suu as she spat out the shirt. "You'd think she could have at least used a clean shirt!"

"Suu, what on earth is going on?" Asked Motoko as she too put away her weapon.

Suu wiped her lips on her sleeve and then spun in the chair to face Motoko, who was still behind her after cutting the ropes. "Naru's gone after Keitaro."

Suu spoke so casually that everyone did a double take when the significance of what she'd said was realized.

"Naru came to me asking if I could help her find Keitaro and I told her that I had built tracking devices into Keitaro's armor. Then she had me change the settings on the locator unit to accept her thumbprints, and when I said I wanted to go with her, she said OK, but when I turned around to grab a few things, she took that rope and got me from behind. She tied me up to that chair and said, 'I'm sorry Suu, but I'll not have anyone else risking their life for my mistake,' and then she tied the rest of that rope to that smelter over there and went out the window."

Haruka, Kitsune and Motoko all hung their heads without realizing that they were all doing it together.

"Suu ... you shouldn't have helped her. She's going to get herself killed." Motoko said softly after a moment.

"I don't suppose you built a tracking device into your locator unit too, did you Suu?" Asked Haruka.

Suu scratched her head. "I'm afraid I didn't. It hadn't seemed necessary at the time I built it. But ..." she said, and then scooted over to her closet and began rustling though it. A moment later, she came up with a small, square device with an antenna sticking out the top. "... but, I do have another locator unit. If she's after Keitaro, then all we have to do is follow Keitaro too, and we're bound to catch up with Naru!"

Kitsune looked over at Haruka. "We have to bring Naru back, Haruka. Motoko is absolutely right, Naru is playing with fire here and she's going to get burned."

At that precise moment Haruka wasn't sure whom she was more angry with, Kanako or Naru. _"I expected some sort of madness from Kanako, but I thought you had more sense than this, Naru," _she thought to herself._ "In the course of one day you go back to accusing Keitaro of infidelity and then go chasing after him when he leaves? Am I the only one here getting a sick sense of Deja Vu? I almost hope that you **do** catch up with him so that **he** can be the one to slap the shit out of you ..." _"I'll go. You two stay here and make sure that no one else leaves this building tonight just in case anyone else has anything funny in mind," these were the words that came out on top of Haruka's thoughts and she looked over at Kitsune and Motoko as she spoke them. "And as for _you_," Haruka continued, now looking down at Suu, but try as she might Haruka just could not find it in her to get mad at her. Instead she just shook her head and smiled thinly. "Perhaps you should build a cage for Naru while I'm gone, but whatever you do, you're staying here too," she said with a barely audible chuckle.

Suu seemed let down that she was to be left out of the chase a second time, but in what was an exceedingly rare display for her just nodded obediently.

* * *

Haruka ordered Suu to calibrate the device for her thumbprints, which Suu did, and then Haruka plucked the locator unit out of Suu's hand and walked out of the room. She went to her own room, where Seta was already in bed and he looked up from the book he was reading as Haruka went into the closet to where she kept a large safe. Punching the code into the keypad, she opened the door and grabbed four more loaded magazines for her pistol. Closing the safe again, she then pulled some belt clips for the magazine out of a small drawer and attached them to her belt, along with a few other items that she felt might be helpful.

Seta cocked an eyebrow. "Did I miss something while I was out today?"

Haruka just cracked a sarcastic grin out of the corner of her mouth. "Remember when Keitaro and Naru used to play hide-and-seek?"

Seta nodded his head.

"For old time's sake, they're giving it another go. Keitaro suddenly got called back tonight and Naru's gone after him."

In the days long past, Seta used to find some small amusement at these sort of antics from Keitaro and Naru, as he saw them as magnified versions of his own efforts to get back with Haruka. However, he found considerably less amusement for this sort thing after that relationship had stabilized and remained stable for so long, to say nothing of the fact that Naru's very life could be in danger, given where Keitaro was going and why.

"Want me to go with you?" He asked, quickly realizing what Haruka was about to do.

"Actually, I'd feel better if you stayed here and kept an eye on everyone else. While we're on this historical roll, I do seem to recall that in the past, when a chase like this begins, everyone tends to join in sooner or later," was Haruka's reply as she put on a lightweight but lengthy jacket to cover the pistol magazines that she wore openly on her belt.

Seta nodded again, put down his book and got out of bed. As he himself put on a light jacket over his pajamas, Haruka reached into the pocket of his pants that had been draped over a chair and pulled out his keys.

"Mind if I take the car, dear?" She said in a rather humorous parental-sounding tone of voice, as though she might be a mother about to go chase down her delinquent daughter who'd snuck out of the house. Seta could not help but smile at her words, despite the nature of the situation that had prompted them.

"Not at all, sweetie, just put some gas in it when you're done, will you?" Seta replied, trying for the same sort of tone that Haruka had struck but not succeeding quite so well. In any case, Haruka just smiled back at him and bowed herself out of the room. Seta just stood there for a moment and pondered how best to secure by himself such a big place with about a dozen potential exits per resident ...

* * *

Starting up Seta's van and pulling out of the parking lot, Haruka turned on Suu's device and quickly traced the best path by street to take to follow it. Suu's locator unit utilized GPS information when depicting the background, which was fortunate, because it showed all the junction points along the train route. She knew that Keitaro had at least a good half hour to 45 minute lead on Naru, which gave her some idea about roughly where Naru would be along the same track, assuming she had made the very next train after she'd made it to the junction nearest to the Hinata Apartments. But then, if she hadn't, it would only put her that much farther ahead of Naru. Grumbling something to herself, she placed the locator on the passenger seat and started on her way.

* * *

All the while, Kitsune and Motoko had remained in Suu's room, where the three of them continued to talk amongst themselves. Not surprisingly, despite her apparent submission to Haruka's request that she stay put, Suu was not long in suggesting that the three of them join the pursuit.

Motoko shook her head. "No, Suu. We're not going anywhere. There's nothing we can do to help in this situation, we could only make matters worse. Let Haruka handle it."

Suu was clearly dissatisfied with that answer, but didn't say anything more. Motoko knew all too well the look on the younger girl's face.

"I mean it, Suu. You so much as look out the window and I'll have you tied back up to that chair faster that you can bat an eye." Motoko's words were motherly and kind in tone, but nevertheless let Suu know that she meant business. Once again Suu didn't have a reply, but sulked a bit with Motoko's preemptive strike against whatever sneak escape plans she may have been thinking up. Motoko cracked a small smile out of the corner of her mouth and turned to Kitsune.

"I'm going to stay with Suu tonight and keep her in line. Why don't you come up with a plan for keeping Naru under control when Haruka brings her back?" Motoko said.

"_Ha - much easier said than done," _ Kitsune thought to herself, but she replied, "Good idea. I'll be in my room."

* * *

Haruka knew the route that Keitaro was taking well enough to plot a way to follow him, the frequent stops made by the trains and her own aggressive driving allowing her to catch up with the very train that she presumed Naru would be on in a surprisingly short order. As she and the train neared the next train stop, Haruka accelerated to a speed that made her dearly hope that there were no traffic cops around. Her anger at Naru had dimmed down to a combination of irritation and concern, but nevertheless she clenched and unclenched her fist a couple of times as she came to a screeching halt at the train station parking lot, anticipating the necessity of neutralizing Naru's resistance by force.

* * *

Naru snapped herself out of a trance as she became aware of the fact that the train was slowing down. Her departure in the pursuit of Keitaro had been impulsive and completely un-thought out, and now that she was hot on his tail, she had begun to ask herself exactly what it was that she intended to do when she caught up with him. The thought that she might make trouble for him entered her head before it even occurred to her that her own physical safety could be jeopardized. However, the memory of the angry, jealous glare that Kanako had given her the moment Keitaro had left flashed in her mind, and her resolve hardened again as the train slowly came to a stop.

"_Looks like he got off at the next stop," _Naru thought as she looked again at the screen of her locator. _"If his werewolf or vampire friends have a problem with me showing up at their door ... well, **I** have a problem with them taking him away from the people who care about him to fight in their stupid little war of conquest, so I guess that will make us even."_

The train was stationary for only a minute or two, and then the doors closed and the train began to accelerate again. It would be another 10 minutes or so before her stop. Naru just stared intently at the locator unit, watching the blip that represented Keitaro. The 10 minutes seemed to drag on and on before the train started to slow down. Naru had been repeating variations of the line of thought she had begun at the last stop all the while, and what doubts about what she was doing that had formed prior melted away under her growing ire. As the train came to a complete stop and the doors opened, she energetically stood up. Much to her start, however, before she could even take one step towards the door, a very firm hand grabbed her shoulder and pushed her back into her seat.

"I'm afraid this isn't your stop, my dear," said an equally firm female voice. Naru didn't need to turn around to recognize who it came from.

"Haruka ... what the hell are you doing here?" Naru said with a sigh.

Haruka snorted. "Funny that you're the one asking me that question."

Naru turned her head and looked at Haruka, who was now standing beside the bench of seats where Naru was seated. "I need to talk to him." She said softly.

Haruka's eyes narrowed to give the impression of absolute seriousness bordering on anger. "It sure looked to me like you had ample opportunity to do that before he left. Why were you more interested in playing these old-fashioned games then?"

Naru's face contorted into an expression somewhere between anger and guilt. "Haruka, I'm sorry! I was ..."

"Save it for Keitaro, Naru. I think he's the one to whom you owe an apology," Haruka interrupted. "But for right now, listen to me very carefully; you're only going to cause trouble for Keitaro, yourself and the rest of us with this foolish little chase of yours. Let Keitaro take care of what he needs to take care of and you can talk to him when he gets back. Right now, you're coming home with me. This is hard enough on everyone without having to worry about you too. We're going to stay on this train until we reach the next hub and then we're taking the first train back to Hinata."

"Bu ..."

"I'm warning you, Naru. Do not press your luck this time." Haruka's tone was not entirely unfriendly, but Naru understood loud and clear her underlying message of, 'I'll be happy to carry you home bound and unconscious if needs be.' Naru looked over at the exit door. The small timer above it that indicated that the train was not going to remain at this stop for much longer. The last thing she wanted was to create still more conflict and stress for her friends, but at the same she was more steadfast than ever that she should get her chance to see Keitaro again before he became completely uncatchable. Haruka read the look of impending decision on Naru's face and made another attempt to influence it. Her tone and expression became more menacing as she allowed Naru a glimpse of a pair of handcuffs that she was carrying in her pocket.

"Don't even think about it, Naru. If you're so concerned about Keitaro, think about how he'll feel if you get yourself killed for such a ..."

At that moment, with the timer for the train nearing zero, a woman of roughly Naru's age walked just past Naru and momentarily stood just in front of her. On a moment's notion, Naru leapt to her feet and bolted for the door, trying to get around the woman and use her as a block between her and Haruka. Haruka was ready for this eventuality and swept Naru's feet out from under her. This caused Naru to crash into the young woman in front of her, who dropped her purse and yelped in surprise as she went down, and causing a sudden shift in the attention of the crowd towards the three of them. Haruka was really angry now, and practically followed Naru to the ground, twisted Naru's left arm and pinned it to her back.

"Dammit Naru, knock this shit off this instant, or I swear to fucking Buddha I'll ..."

"I'M SORRY, HARUKA!" Naru shouted. As the woman she'd crashed into began to put her belongings back into her purse, Naru noticed that a small can of pepper spray was among the woman's possessions. Lunging forward with her right arm despite the pain of Haruka's hold on her left arm, she grabbed the can, and turning as best she could towards Haruka who had lowered her head to hiss her final warning straight into her ear, she blasted the spray directly into Haruka's face.

"URK!" Haruka grunted, more out of surprise than pain, but as she reflexively pulled back she unwittingly let go of Naru's arm and recoiled just enough to allow Naru to scramble out from under her. Haruka's tactical training quickly kicked in though, and she lunged forward in an attempt to grab her as Naru again bolted for the door. However, Naru, powered by adrenaline, had taken full advantage of the second or so that Haruka had given her to escape, and just managed to clear Haruka's reach and make it out the door just as the door closed behind her. Watching from inside as best her now very red and irritated eyes would allow, she saw Naru stop and turn to look at her from outside the train, and Naru seemed to mouth something to her as the train began to accelerate.

"_I'm sorry, Haruka ..." _Naru said quietly, as much to herself as to Haruka, as she watched Haruka's face disappear as the train renewed its endless cycle around the city.

* * *

Haruka shook her head a few times in a rather futile attempt to clear her eyes of the tears that now rolled uncontrollably out of them, and then stood up and stepped back to the seat where she'd been sitting before. Now that the action was over and her own adrenaline was scaling back, she started to really feel the fiery sting in her eyes and throat.

"_Damn, I guess I know how Keitaro must have felt for his first year or two at Hinata. Caring about Naru can be hazardous to one's health," _Haruka thought sarcastically to herself. At that moment she became aware of the fact that the other passengers in her car were silently staring at her with the 'what the hell was that' expression.

"Um ... are you OK, lady?" asked another young passenger, this one male, as he cautiously approached Haruka from the side and gently put his hand on her shoulder.

Haruka turned to the young man and smiled, but with most of her face now slightly swollen and red and with her eyes horribly bloodshot, the gesture was more scary than friendly.

"I think I'll be alright in the morning," Haruka said in a tone that suggested that she was attempting humor.

The young man returned an uncertain smile, but tactfully removed his hand from Haruka's shoulder.


	31. Backfire

It was not long after Naru got off the train when the blip on her locator screen abruptly ceased flashing. The device locked down the location of the last signal and then read that replies to the pings had stopped. Disheartened, she made her way to the spot pinpointed by the locator.

* * *

Haruka, meanwhile, had gotten off at the next stop. Politely turning down several offers for help, cleaned herself up as best she could in the station restroom. It had by then been about 15 minutes since she'd been hit with the pepper spray, and the time combined with her face washing, eye rinsing and gargling meant that most of the sting had cleared out of her eyes and throat. Her eyes were still badly bloodshot though, and were still a bit red and puffy, so she still stood out quite a bit. Checking on her own locator unit and seeing that Keitaro's blip was no longer being refreshed - and thus knowing exactly where Naru was headed - Haruka waited for the next train that would take her back to the stop where Naru had escaped. As said train approached, Haruka resolved not to give Naru the benefit of the doubt a second time when she caught up with her again.

* * *

Naru wasn't paying attention to how long she was walking, but she did catch herself thinking that she wished she'd thought to grab some taxi money. However long it actually took her, she eventually ended up in front of a large, impressive looking building. If Suu's device was to be believed, this is where Keitaro was, inside this building. Or at least, perhaps that's where his armor was. Or maybe he'd just passed through this building and Suu's tracking devices crapped out. Or who knows. But it was all she had to go on. Pulling together her resolve, she put the locator into her pocket, stepped forward, opened the front door, and walked into the building.

There were 3 vampires at the front desk, and 10 security guards in various places in the main entryway. They had been talking and joking around amongst themselves until a solitary female figure walked up to their front door, and simply stood there for a few minutes without walking inside.

"Who the hell is that?" Asked one of the security agents, after he and several of the others had been watching her on the video screen for a moment.

Naru's image was automatically ran against a database the moment she became visible to the cameras, and within 20 seconds the 'No Match Found' result flashed across the screen.

"No idea. No guests are scheduled at this time." The agent looked at another screen, which gave a thermal image of Naru. "She's human," the agent added. He flipped a few switches which performed a few other scans on Naru. "No weapons or bugs detected. That device in her hands looks like some sort of tracking mechanism, but it seems to be inactive."

Several of the agents and guards exchanged glances, but all eyes moved to the front door as the human walked inside.

"Can we help you?" Said one of the vampires at the desk, in a somewhat uninviting tone of voice.

"I'm looking for Keitaro Urashima," Naru said, also in a tone that fell short of friendly.

At the mention of Keitaro's name, more glances were exchanged among the vampires in the room, and another of the agents at the desk made a slight notion to some of the security guards. Naru didn't notice the 3 of them who moved behind her and cut off her only exit. The expressions from those still in front of her grew less friendly still.

"What's your business with Mr. Urashima?" Asked the same agent who'd spoken to her before.

Naru's eyes narrowed. "My business with him is none of _your_ business. Just tell him that Naru is here to speak with him."

The agent chuckled a little. "None of my business?" He motioned with his head to the security guards who were standing behind Naru, and they moved forward. Two of them each grabbed one of Naru's arms, while the third moved in front of her and turned to face her.

"What the hell do you think you're doing! Let go of me!" Shouted Naru angrily, but her best effort to break free didn't even wobble the vampires who held her.

"See what that thing was that she had in her hand," said the agent at the desk calmly, and the third guard reached into her pocket and pulled out Suu's locator. Naru made a futile effort of resistance as he did so, but didn't hinder the guard in the least. He examined the device for a moment, pushing the various buttons, but Naru had turned it off before putting it in her pocket, and without her thumbprints the locator did not function.

"What is this?" Asked the guard after he was satisfied that he wasn't going to figure it out on his own within the next 5 minutes.

Naru stopped her ineffectual struggles for a moment to respond. "It's an asshole detector. It was working just fine a minute ago but I think you people shorted the damn thing ou..."

The guard's hand making solid contact across Naru's face stopped her from finishing her sentence. A small trickle of blood ran down from Naru's lip as she turned her head back to face the guard. Her face bore an expression that would scare the daylights out of any sane human, but the vampire was distinctly unmoved.

"Let's start over," the guard said quietly, his face now only inches from Naru's. "First off, why don't you tell us why you even know Mr. Urashima's name?"

"Why don't you just bring him down here and have him answer that for you? What do you think I'm going to do to him with all you rough and tumblers guarding him?" Naru replied, doing her best to restrain the anger in her voice. Her fearsome expression didn't change though.

The guard turned around and looked at the agents at the desk. Still more glances were exchanged, and then a few nods. The guard turned back to face Naru.

"Alright then," he said. "But I hope for your sake that Mr. Urashima will vouch for you. If he doesn't ... well, that's not my department. But I'm sure it won't be anything nice."

It took every ounce and then some of Naru's self-control to contain the anger in her voice a second time. "Fine," was all she got out.

"Well, Mr. Urashima is a busy fellow and it might be a while before he can see you. In the meantime, I hope you'll find our guest quarters suitable."

* * *

While this drama was unfolding downstairs, Keitaro and Kanako had been back at the headquarters for a while, and were still talking to the interrogators and code breakers. Much to Kanako's delight, they had indeed acquired enough information to make a convincing story as to why they had felt the need to call the pair of them back in. While no definitive information about exactly what the foreign vampires had been planning to do with that strike force that had been so memorably steamrollered a few days prior had come up yet, it was learned that the foreign vampires knew the location both of Rikyo's island and Gennai's headquarters. It had been their original intention to attack the Japanese Lycans first and then try and win the Japanese vampires over, but seeing both that Rikyo's island fortress made a much more difficult target and the complete failure of early probes to find any indication that the Japanese vampire community was interested in fighting a war that was not their own, their plans had changed into capturing the leadership of both sides so as to find out their weaknesses, and eradicate both of them.

"Well ... it would seem that the extra security precautions now in effect both here and on Rikyo's island were well justified after all," Keitaro said solemnly, after listening to a more detailed description of the above information.

"With the destruction of their first strike force, they will have had to have changed their plans again. We need to find out what they intend to do next," Kanako put it. She turned to the interrogators. "I think it's time for a change of tactics. These prisoners cannot know what the new plan is, so stop concerning yourselves with learning about their plans. Make your emphasis finding out who and where their own leaders are. I think pulling a page out of their own book might give us just what we need."

The lead interrogator nodded.

"That's a good idea, but I do have one concern," voiced Keitaro, turning to Kanako. "I think we need to keep this inside Japan and a strictly defensive operation. There is almost certainly dissent and disagreement among our enemies at this point as to what their next move should be. Maybe some of them are already suggesting that this conquest is turning out to be more trouble than it's worth. Inflicting losses on their invasion force will encourage this situation. However, if we leave our own shores to strike at their heart, then all of a sudden we are no longer simply a territory to be conquered, we will have become a threat to their own internal security. Whatever dissent we have working in our favor will end, and they will be able to commit more resources against us. We don't know how big this is outside Japan, but I'm sure you'll agree that it has the potential to be more than we can handle."

Everyone in the room, including Kanako, soaked up Keitaro's words for a moment, and then more nods of agreement. Kanako smiled at Keitaro.

"Good thinking, Keitaro. You're right, we should keep the scope of things in mind," she said.

Keitaro returned her smile.

Kanako then turned to the code breakers. "Now, with this new objective in mind, is there anything you've found out that might be useful to us that you didn't mention in your rundown?"

The two representatives from the code breakers flipped through their notes for a moment, and then one of them answered, "No, nothing yet. But we'll get back down there and go over again what we've got and renew our efforts to crack the rest of it."

"Good work, guys. Keep it up."

With Kanako's words, the code breakers bowed themselves out of the room and went back to work, and Kanako dismissed the interrogators to do the same. As they were leaving, Keitaro and then Kanako stood up as well.

"I'm going to check in with Rikyo and inform him of the new direction we're taking. In the meantime, it looks like our little vacation, such as it was, is over. Think you can secure us some guest quarters?" Keitaro said to Kanako.

"Not a problem. Um ..." Kanako trailed off for a moment.

"What?"

"Well ... the lodging situation here hasn't changed at all. Is that double room still OK with you? For the two of us, I mean ..."

A bit of hesitation became apparent in Keitaro, which he was instantly both aware of and regretted. Thinking quickly, he decided not to make an issue out of the situation. He didn't want to send the wrong message to Kanako, but at the same time he didn't want to make it seem like he was keeping her at an arm's length. She had been right about at least one thing - the two of them would have to function in absolute harmony together for their mission to have its greatest chances of success.

"Yeah, that's fine."

As Keitaro and Kanako opened the door to leave the room, the intercom back on the table buzzed.

"**Mr. Urashima? Are you still in there?" **Came a voice over the intercom

Keitaro walked back to the table and pressed the Talk button.

"Yes, I'm still here."

"**There's a ... um ... _guest_ who showed up at the front door a little while ago who asked for you by name. Are you expecting anyone?"**

"Uh ... no ... I take it that this guest is not one of our people?"

"**You might say that. She's a human."**

It took Keitaro only a moment to take a stab at who his visitor might be. Closing his eyes, he slumped his head down.

"Did she give a name?"

"**Yeah. Said her name was 'Naru' and that you'd want to talk to her. Do you want to see her or would you like us to deal with her?"**

Keitaro, with his head still hung low, shook his head a few times. "Yes, I'll see her. Where is she now?"

"**We've got her locked up in one of the holding cells down below."**

"Thank you for passing the message. I'm heading down there right now," Keitaro said, and turned off the intercom.

"You told her where this place was?" Asked Kanako, who could not help sounding a bit incredulous.

Keitaro snorted. "Of course not. I don't know how she found this place, but rest assured I'll find out."

Kanako's expression changed to one of extreme seriousness and concern. "Naru seems to be severely deficient in common sense. Did you or did you not tell her that you were going to the headquarters for the Japanese vampire clans to prepare for a battle? What the hell is she ..."

Keitaro held up two fingers to stop Kanako from talking. "Please don't, Kanako," he said softly. "I'll take care of this, would you mind getting our quarters reserved and squared away?"

Kanako was visibly uncertain about how to take this situation, but she quickly obliged him. "Sure. See you shortly," she said, and the two of them left the room.

* * *

Naru sat on the small bed in her cell, stewing in anger that made her whole face a few shades darker than it usually was. As this point she wasn't even entirely aware of exactly what it was that infuriated her the most - herself, for her own foolishness that had caused the situation in the first place, or the vampires here in this building and the treatment she'd received from them. In a way, her stewing was fortunate - there were two armed guards sitting by the door that led into this hallway of cells, and were she not so lost in her own anger, she might well be enticing more violence out of her captors. She didn't even look up when she heard to door open or the sound of footsteps coming her way. It wasn't until she heard Keitaro's voice that she raised her head.

"Naru ..."

She slowly looked up at him. Keitaro could see the split in her lip and the bruise on her cheek, and he wished that he had to wonder why they were there. But it seemed pretty obvious.

"These friends of yours that you speak so highly of could really use a lesson in hospitality," Naru said first, the sarcasm in her voice thick enough to cut with a knife.

Keitaro found himself getting a little angry too. Turning to the two guards over by the door, he said, "would you excuse us for a moment, please?"

"Yes sir," said one of them, and then both of them walked out the door.

Keitaro closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he turned back to face Naru. Then he opened his eyes and just stared at her.

"What?" She said after a moment.

Keitaro gave a disbelieving huff. "What? Well, I'm extending a courtesy to you that you've recently denied me - I'm giving you a chance to explain yourself before I get angry."

Now Naru made a gesture of disbelief as she stood up from the bed and walked over to the bars. _"YOU'RE _going to get angry! Aren't I the one that ..."

"You'd better screw your head on straight, my love, and you'd better start RIGHT now," Keitaro interrupted with a raised voice. "You coming here was _outrageously_ inappropriate. I don't even know what I should say to you right now. Not only could you have caused me heaps of trouble, but you put your very _life_ at risk! What the hell were you thinking?"

Naru had to admit to herself that this was not the reaction she'd anticipated from Keitaro. She had expected an outpouring of apology and some sort of promise to make it up to her, as was almost always Keitaro's wont, not a sharply worded criticism of Naru's own actions. Granted, she was well aware of the fact that Keitaro was absolutely in the right to accuse her of an irrational and inappropriate action, but nevertheless it felt strange to her. At that moment her anger began to simmer down a little.

"I'm sorry, Keitaro. Actually, that's what I came here to do. To apologize to you for automatically assuming the worst when I saw you in bed with Kanako and for not allowing you the chance to explain the situation," she said, her voice still somewhat strained.

A moment of awkward silence followed Naru's words. Then Keitaro shook his head and sighed.

"Well, I appreciate the thought, but please promise me you'll never go to such counter-productive lengths to apologize to me ever again," he began. "We obviously need to have a much longer talk than I can afford the time for right now, and that will be the first thing on my list when I get back home. But for the moment, I'm going to get you out of here, and you are going to go straight home and stay there until I get back. Understand?"

"Bu..."

"No ands, ifs or buts about it. I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no room for discussion here. I think I can sweep this one under the rug and you seem to have gotten away with it more or less intact, but you're going to create a real shit storm for all involved if you ever pull a stunt like this again. Look, I'll be back, just like I've always come back every other time. We can pull a 24-hour long conversation then if that's what it takes, but that will be then and this is now. Right now, you're going home."

Without waiting for Naru to respond, Keitaro turned on his heels and started walking over to the door.

"Oh, by the way," he said, stopping after he'd taken a few steps and turning back around to face Naru. "How did you find me here?"

"I ... followed you," Naru said, realizing too late that her lie was ridiculously obvious. Keitaro regarded her for a moment and then slowly walked back over to the cell. Putting his hands on the bars right beside hers, he looked her dead in the eye.

"If anyone else comes looking for me here, they run a great risk of getting hurt. Do you understand that?" He said softly but very seriously.

Naru just nodded slightly.

"If Suu or Sara gets the exploration bug and decide to use whatever means you used to find me to pay me a visit here too and get themselves hurt or killed, how would you like to live with the fact that you could have prevented that had you been willing to give up your little secret and allowed me to put a patch on this security hole?"

Once again Naru was taken aback both by tone and seriousness that Keitaro's words leveled at her. She was already very frazzled from her dealings with the security agents, and without her conscious approval her anger climbed back up a notch.

"Fine. Suu built a tracking beacon into that armor she made you, and I used the locator device that built to track it to find you. Is that better?"

Naru's sarcastic tone of voice was raising Keitaro's own irritation bar. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, and then spoke very firmly.

"Go home, find all of Suu's information related to this tracking mechanism and destroy it. I'll see you when I get back. This conversation is over."

With that he again spun on his heels and walked quickly over to the door, Naru finding herself without a ready reply to Keitaro's cold shoulder. Keitaro rather shortly yanked open the door and turned to his right and addressed one of the guards.

"Take her out front, stick her in a cab and get her out of here, will you?"

Naru's jaw dropped.

"Get her _out _of here? What the ..." was all Keitaro heard of Naru's protest, as the door closing behind him cut of whatever else she said.

* * *

"_Dammit, what the hell has gotten into Naru! She's acting as ridiculous as she used to a few years ago! Who the hell opened up her thick skull and hit the 'rewind' button?" _Keitaro thought to himself irately as he walked at that faster-than-usual pace that one does when they're trying to physically outrun the irritant in their mind. _"Well, this is not the time or place to worry about this. We'll work this out afterwards," _he thought, and he took another deep breath and pushed all thoughts about the matter out of his mind. As he calmed himself down his pace slowed down to normal as he headed for the quarters where he and Kanako would be staying until the time came for them to carry out their mission.

"Is everything alright?" Asked Kanako, as Keitaro walked in the door. She was sitting at the small table with an equipment list and turned her head to look at him.

Keitaro chuckled softly. "Naru can be so thick-headed sometimes, but it's nothing that we haven't worked through before," he said with some artificial cheer in his voice. As he looked at the expression forming on Kanako's face he realized that he'd just invited her to bash Naru again, and he really didn't want to get the subject going again. "Look, just help me forget about her for the duration of this mission, will you? Let's not even bring her up again."

Kanako could have kissed a warthog right then if that had been the only thing in the room. _"Your wish is my command, my dear Keitaro ..." _she thought to herself with her mental smile stretching clear across her face. However, on the outside, she exercised extraordinary self control to appear more or less nonchalant as she simply said, "No problem."

* * *

Meanwhile, the two security guards escorted Naru back to the main entrance. She offered no resistance this time and so one guard led the way and the other followed closely behind her but neither of them touched her. For the second time in as many incidents, she was realizing too late that she'd royally blown it with Keitaro. Her effort to apologize for her first goof-up had backfired miserably, and the friction between the two of them was now worse than it would have been had she simply stayed home. Instead of stewing in anger, Naru was now wallowing in disappointment. Disappointment in herself. She hung her head in silence as the three of them sat down on a bench in the lobby to wait for the taxi that had been called for Naru. Naru wasn't paying any attention to the passing of time at all, but it didn't seem like too long before the guard to her left spoke.

"You're ride's here. Let's go," he said, and relatively gently but still quite firmly grabbed her elbow to motion her to stand up. She obliged without protest or resistance, although an expression of suppressed disgust became noticeable on her face. The lead guard opened the door and the three of them stepped outside. Naru saw a taxi waiting at the curb. The guards slowly led Naru down the stairs and down the short walkway to the street. As the they reached the taxi, the lead guard turned around and locked eyes with Naru.

"I strongly suggest that you never, ever come here again," he said, in a rather loud voice that carried an undisguised tone of menace.

Naru resisted her initial temptation to respond with a wisecrack, and simply opened the door to the taxi and got it. She watched through the window as the guards gave her one last sour look and then turned around and went back inside the building. The taxi driver turned around and looked at Naru.

"Where to, miss?" He asked.

"The Hinata Apartments please," she replied blandly.

* * *

Across the street, from the window of another building, several pairs of eyes intently watched the taxicab drive away.

"Are you sure that woman is a human?" Asked one character who peered through a pair of binoculars.

"It's hard to be sure at this range, but it sure looked like it to me. Her heat signature looked more like the rest of the nameless masses out there than those two vampires who stuffed her into that cab," said another, who was watching through a large thermal scope.

Both observers turned to someone else who was standing just behind them.

"That doesn't make a lot of sense. What would they want with a human? Why are they letting her go?" Asked yet another voice from a couch a little farther back in the room, the owner of which was busily typing into his laptop computer.

The person standing behind the two with the observation equipment shook her head. "I don't know," she said, seemingly deep in thought. "But it's not like we're overwhelmed with leads here, so let's see if we can't find out, if only to satisfy our curiosity." After a moment, she looked down at the two observers. "I don't suppose you got that taxi cab's number, did you?"

"Yes I did," said the one with the binoculars.

"Good." Turning to the man with the computer, she said, "try and hack into that taxi company's network and find out where that cab is going. I want to know it's next three stops after this one here." She motioned to the building that they had been staking out with her last words.

The computer man sighed. "Seems like another waste of time to me, but you're the boss." As the observer fed him the numbers and he set about his business, the officer of the group turned her head back towards the enemy stronghold that was just across the street.

"_If these local vampires are foolish enough to actually use human familiars, this might be just the break we need," _she thought to herself. _"They both said that neither that woman nor the vamps at her side looked very happy with one another. Maybe she's some sort of disgruntled or disgraced employee. Yes, she could be very useful to us."_

After another minute or two, the vampire on the computer piped up again. "Well, right now that super important human girl of yours seems to be heading to an old inn somewhere in the township of Hinata. Dunno why she's going there, according to my information that inn has been closed to the public for years now."

The vampire in charge wasted no time. She was sick of sitting here waiting for some magnificent opening in her enemy's defenses to just drop into her lap. "You two stay here, and you come with me," she said to the observers and the computer man respectively. To the latter, she continued. "We're going to check out this old inn ourselves."

Her unwilling companion raised his arms in an expression of mild exasperation. "This is ..."

"... a lead. I know it's not much of one but it's the only lead we've gotten in almost 2 whole days now. So let's go," she interrupted.

Her partner dropped his arms in defeat. "Alright. Let's go," he said, in a tone of voice that restated his opinion that this was a waste of his time.


	32. Behind the Scenes

Having nothing else to go on but this building, and with Naru nowhere to be found immediately around it, Haruka bought a magazine from a stand on the sidewalk and sat down on a bench down the street a bit. She had no idea if Naru was inside the building, or if she had found some other clue to Keitaro's whereabouts and was nowhere near here. But Haruka still wanted to do what she could to bring Naru home, and the fresh nighttime air felt good on her still slightly red and irritated face anyway. So she sat down, pretended to read her magazine, and kept her eyes peeled for any sign of Naru.

She was only sitting on the bench for perhaps half an hour at most before she caught sight of her target. Haruka was immediately worried by the fact that Naru was being led on by two armed, unfriendly-looking men, but her fears were alleviated before she could contemplate an action when she realized that Naru was being led to a taxi and that the two escorts were not going with her. The taxi quickly drove off, and the two men went back inside the building.

Haruka put down her magazine and buried her face in her hands.

"_Naru ... I am SO going to kick your ass ..."_

_

* * *

_

Naru didn't say a word for the entire ride back to the Hinata Apartments, not that she probably would have had much to say to an anonymous cab driver in any case. As the cab pulled up into the parking lot of her home, the thought of answering to an irate Haruka popped into Naru's mind, but at this point she didn't really care anymore.

"That'll be 2300 yen, please," the driver said as he parked the car.

"I'll have to run inside to grab some money. Can I leave you my ID for collateral?" Naru asked.

"That's fine."

Naru handed the driver her ID card, and then scurried up the steps toward the entrance. She really didn't want to see anyone right now, but unfortunately her thought to sneak in quietly came to her after she'd already barged in the front door and was heard by Kitsune, who was in the lounge next to the entryway. Hearing someone come in and assuming it to be either Naru or Haruka, Kitsune hurried over to see which one it was.

"Naru! Hey!" Exclaimed Kitsune, as her friend just kept walking past her when she attempted to talk to her.

"Hold on a moment, Kitsune. I need to pay a taxi driver who's waiting for me outside."

Kitsune wasn't about to play this game again. With rather uncharacteristic resolve, she hustled to catch up with Naru, and then firmly grabbed a hold of her shirt before Naru could get more than a few paces up the stairs, bringing her to a stop.

"I'll cover the cab for you. But you and I really need to talk, so why don't you come with me."

Naru tried to get angry, but found her emotional energy tank to be somewhat drained. "Let go of me, Kitsune," she said in a flat voice. "We'll talk later."

"No," replied Kitsune, with more unusual seriousness and without releasing Naru from her grip. "No more laters. Right now."

Naru was not at all in the mood for this, but she just didn't have the energy left to resist. That, and she figured she'd created enough regrets for one day without getting into a fight with her best friend as well.

"Alright, alright," said Naru in a surrendering tone of voice. Kitsune let go of her and Naru came back down the stairs.

As Kitsune met her face to face, she noticed Naru's split and swollen lip, as well as the unmistakably hand-shaped bruise on her cheek. Naru's facial expression was one of emotional exhaustion.

Kitsune raised an eyebrow and put her hands on Naru's shoulders. "Are you OK?" She asked, in a genuinely caring tone of voice.

Naru looked away slightly as a few tears formed in her eyes against her will. "I think so," she said softly.

Looking behind Naru, out the front door, Kitsune then asked, "Where's Haruka?"

Naru raised her eyebrow in question. "Haruka?"

"She went looking for you. Took another of Suu's locators and figured by that following Keitaro, she'd catch up to you."

Naru didn't say anything, and just shook her head a couple times and shrugged her shoulders.

Kitsune was silent for a moment too, and than put her right arm around Naru. "Well let's go take care of that cabbie, and then you and I will sit down and have a little chat over a cup of tea."

Naru just nodded.

* * *

The inquisitive vampire and her reluctant companion managed to get into position just in time to see Naru and Kitsune walk back in the front door of the Hinata Apartments. Taxi drivers tended to drive conservatively, given their business, and this had allowed them to catch up despite the lead that Naru had had on them. The vampires had parked their car where it would not be seen from the large inn and had ran on foot to some bushes, where they had a pretty decent view of the place but were well concealed themselves. The more enthusiastic of the two had done her best to explain to her partner on the drive here why she thought this lead was worth pursuing, but the skeptic was only partially convinced.

"OK, the girl went into the old inn. Now what?" He asked.

The leader was looking over the whole place with her binoculars. Though it was closed to the public, it was obvious by the good upkeep and the many lights that the place was well-occupied. What was this place? Was it some sort of unofficial or secret hideout for the enemy? Was it a dormitory for a whole army of familiars? Or had they just followed home some bumbling rich girl who'd been kicked out of her daddy's office when she threw a tantrum because he wouldn't buy her a new car or something mundane like that? She had to admit to herself that she saw nothing to indicate to her that this place had anything to do with their mission. There were no markings, insignia, titles or even decorations that they had been able to associate either with the Japanese vampire or Lycan communities. There were no obvious defenses, no obvious surveillance equipment ... no obvious security mechanisms at all, actually. A far cry from even the smallest known outpost owned and operated by their enemy. But still ... she could not shake the gut feeling that they might just be on to something.

"I suppose there's not much else we can do here right now. There's nothing on the outside that immediately jumps out at me as relevant," she said frankly, as she lowered her binoculars. "But I still want this lead checked out in full." She looked at her watch. "We've got about 6 more hours before sunrise. Let's go get the plates of any vehicles in their lot and run the names through our database. I also want to find out who's living or working here. Search tax records, find out who owns the building, dig up anything and everything you can. I will ensure that you have access to all the resources and assistance you need. Any questions?"

Her partner shook his head for a moment, then stopped as he cracked a wry grin. "One, actually ..."

The leader cocked an eyebrow. "What?"

"How would you like to bet 10,000 yen that we're going to waste a lot of effort shaking down a tree that holds no fruit?"

She hesitated for a moment, then returned his grin. "You're on."

* * *

Kitsune walked back into her room carrying two cups of hot tea. Naru already sat on a cushion around a small table that Kitsune had in the center of her room. Handing Naru her cup and sitting down across from her, The Fox began to speak.

"First thing's first. Are you sure you're OK?" She asked Naru again, tapping her own lip with her finger at the spot where Naru's was split and swollen.

Naru smiled very dryly. "I've had worse injuries in my day. I think I'll be alright."

"Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"No."

"Good. Then let's cut right to the chase. Naru, do you _really _think that Keitaro is cheating on you with Kanako?"

Naru sighed and was forced to consciously renew her resolve not to add to her day's woes by throwing grit into the gears of yet another relationship. "No ... no, I don't," she said rather meekly.

"You are right about one thing, Kanako has a crush on Keitaro. Or maybe she's full-blown in love with him. It's hard to be sure, but she does not think of him as a brother, that much I can be sure of. Whatever the exact detail may be, yes, she wants him for herself, and yes, she's jealous up the yin-yang that his heart belongs to you instead."

Naru didn't give any visible reaction to Kitsune's words.

"However, with regards to what I said last, Keitaro was scarcely _aware _of those things until _I_ told him. Before that, he didn't think anything more was going on that you playing off a little strange jealousy yourself. You see, I had a nice long chat with both Kanako and Keitaro that night. I got the inside scoop from both of them. And if I may be so bold as to say so, I hope it was Keitaro himself who gave you that smackdown for the notion even occurring to you that there was a disloyal bone in his body, even though I doubt very much that he'd ever raise a hand to you no matter how much you may deserve it sometimes," Kitsune added with a stern look.

Naru was not enamored by the prospect of another scolding. Drained though she was, irritation was once again giving her a little kick in the pants.

"Kitsune, if this 'talk' of yours is going to amount to nothing more than a tongue-lashing, then I'm going to walk out of here. I'm sorry to disappoint you by telling you that it was _not_ Keitaro who hit me, but you'll be happy to know that he's already read me the first chapter of the riot act and has vowed to finish the book when he gets back. I can't deal with any more of this today," she said in a tired sounding voice.

Kitsune crossed her arms. "If I didn't know you as well as I do, perhaps I'd buy that and call it an evening. However, the words "I can't deal with this" coming out of your mouth are almost always a heads-up that you're about to do something stupid. Given your behavior these past couple of days, that worries me - and everyone else - a lot."

Kitsune's statement was very true, and Naru knew it. She opened her mouth as if to speak but then realized that she had no effective counter to Kitsune's bullseye. She slumped down a bit after a moment.

"Right. Now what's the first step in getting yourself out of a hole?" Kitsune asked after she had let her last statement sink in. Naru just looked up without saying anything or changing her expression.

"Stop digging," Kitsune answered. "Nothing has been done that cannot be undone, but you really have to stop exacerbating things. You have to get yourself under control. You're acting as idiotic as you did when Keitaro first met Mutsumi, and then as now, you're causing problems where none existed prior."

Kitsune could tell then that Naru really was at the point where any further criticism was only going to wear her out and would not likely be taken into due consideration, and so she decided to move on.

"But anyway, now that your safety is no longer an immediate concern, this is for you and Keitaro to work out between you when he comes back. I'm glad your home and I'm glad your safe. I hope you remember from here on out that I'm always here for you. The next time you feel like you need to do something like this, please come and talk to me first."

Naru was silent and still for a moment, then she closed her eyes and nodded slightly in acknowledgement. Kitsune had had in mind a longer conversation than this, but seeing how worn out her friend was, decided to leave well enough alone for the time being.

"Well, if there's nothing you want to talk about right now, then I suppose you're free to go," Kitsune said with a wink and a modestly successful attempt to lighten the mood.

Naru looked up at her for a moment without anything to say. Though she hadn't enjoyed hearing it, she appreciated her friend's willingness to criticize her honestly and without reservation, as well as Kitsune's genuine concern for her well-being. Slowly, a weak but sincere smile cracked on Naru's face. "You think maybe we can just hang out for a while and not talk about anything too terribly deep?"

Kitsune smiled, uncrossed her arms, and leaned back. "Sounds like a plan to me. Want to go out or stay in?"

Naru opted for the latter, and they went down to the hot spring together. The extraordinary soothing power of this water did Naru wonders, quenching her nerves and granting her a session of genuine relaxation. After they'd been soaking for a while, Kitsune stood up and stretched.

"Would you care for a glass of sake?" She asked as she looked over at Naru.

Naru opened her eyes and slowly stirred, until she was standing up too. "Yes, actually, that sounds good. Thank you, Kitsune."

The Fox chuckled. "I was offering to get it for you, you know," she said playfully.

"Just because you're looking out for me doesn't mean you have to wait on me too," Naru replied, matching Kitsune's tone. The two of them walked over to the door side by side, but as they opened the door and stepped inside, they found themselves face to face with someone else who was in dire need of a relaxing soak.

* * *

Haruka had taken the train back to where she'd left Seta's van and then returned to the Hinata Apartments after seeing Naru leave in a taxi, knowing that she no longer had any way of following her in the immediate present. Her desire to beat the stuffing out of Naru had declined with the passing of time and the wearing off of the effects of the pepper spray, but nevertheless Haruka wasn't exactly a bubbly bundle of good cheer by then either and thought that a dip in the hot spring might make her a little more presentable. After a quick talk with Seta during which she explained what had happened, she had stripped down, put on her robe, grabbed a towel, and made her way to hot spring. When she was only a few steps away from the door, it opened ahead of her, and along with Kitsune was the one person whose presence was not going to facilitate the rehabilitation of Haruka's mood.

Haruka saw them before they saw her, and she had already stopped walking before the noticed her. Naru quickly froze, prompting Kitsune to do the same when she noticed that Naru was no longer keeping pace.

"_Oh crap," _thought Naru to herself, as she watched Haruka's facial expression for an indication of what her reaction might be. Much to her surprise, after a moment of awkward and tense silence, Haruka smiled slightly.

"Naru ... what a pleasant surprise ... are you OK?" Haruka asked, in a suspiciously bland voice.

"Uh ... yeah ... I'm fine, thanks ..." Naru said slowly, her nervousness quite obvious and causing Kitsune to look back and forth between them with that confused frown that one gets when they have no idea what's going on.

Keeping her smile, Haruka closed her eyes and nodded twice. "Good," she said simply. "Then why don't we go ahead and get this out of the way ..."

With deceptive speed, Haruka punched Naru hard in the stomach. With a loud "oof!" Naru fell backwards and scrunched up on the ground, taking a deep, slow breath as though the wind had been knocked out of her.

Kitsune's eyes went wide as Haruka struck, and quickly The Fox placed herself between the fallen Naru and Haruka.

"Woah, woah, hey! What the hell was that about?" Kitsune said, as she held up her hands in front of Haruka in the physical gesture meaning 'Stop.' Haruka made no move to advance on Naru, and gave the impression that she was satisfied. Before Kitsune or Haruka could do or say anything else, a loud cough from Naru directed both of their attentions to her.

"It's alright, Kitsune," Naru said with a wheezing chuckle as she slowly picked herself up. "I _(oog) _had that coming."

Kitsune's mouth now hung open as she looked back and forth quickly between Naru and Haruka. Naru pulled herself to her feet, and though she held her left hand to the spot where Haruka had hit her, stood up straight and bowed her head to Haruka.

"Ow ... I hope that makes us even," Naru said somewhat submissively.

Haruka had subtle but readable expression of satisfaction on her face for another moment, then smiled a little more sincerely and offered a handshake to Naru. Naru meekly accepted the gesture.

"Never, ever pull something like that again, and we'll call it even," Haruka said in her standard tone of voice. "But if ... you know what, never mind. You two just leaving?" Haruka motioned to the hot spring with her head.

"Actually, we were going to grab a glass of sake and go back," Kitsune said slowly, still a little confused but deciding to move past it.

"That does sound good. Mind if I join the two of you?"

Kitsune looked over at Naru, expecting to see at least a suppressed sign of objection. Quite the contrary, Kitsune thought she saw relief on Naru's face - presumably relief for not incurring more of Haruka's wrath for some unknown offence _(despite the things she was mumbling on her way out the door, Kitsune doubted that Haruka would really punch Naru just for having taken off after Keitaro). _

Naru was indeed glad that Haruka had let her off with just one solid punch to the gut. That gratitude combined with the relaxation she'd already gotten from the hot spring and light conversation with her friend meant that she didn't have to force the light smile on her face as she answered, "Please do."

Kitsune had no idea what had just transpired, but decided to just let it go. Cranking her head in that way that meant, 'whatever,' she again put her arm around Naru, then stepped forward and put her other arm around Haruka.

"Alrighty then, let's go grab a drink and soak ourselves silly," Kitsune said in her best, most ridiculous cheerful voice, and pulled the two other women along as she stepped firmly forward. Neither could help but smile and give a chuckle or two at Kitsune's aptitude for showering awkwardness with pleasantness. The three of them walked to the kitchen where each grabbed a tall glass. Now that Kitsune didn't drink it like water anymore, she could afford much finer sake than the stuff she used to stock, and she filled each of their glasses from a bottle of the finest sake that one was likely to find on an over-the-counter, commercial basis. Even Haruka seemed to be recovering her own good spirits as they all returned to the hot spring.

* * *

The leader of the stakeout team-turned reconnaissance unit started when her name was called from inside the room where her computer literate companion and a few assistants had been busily carrying out her orders. She had started to fade out a couple hours prior as she stopped trying to listen in on the muffled voices from behind the closed door, and by now it was nearly sunrise and almost time to retire for the day. She had left some fresh observers at the building across from the headquarters facility of the Japanese vampires and had taken her current team back to their own field headquarters to do their research on the 'Hinata Apartments.' Almost groggily standing up from her chair, she walked over to the room, opened the door, and walked inside, closing the door behind her.

"What have you got?" She asked.

Her companion pulled a few papers off the tabletop next to his computers. "This is very interesting. That old inn we visited is owned by a one Hina Urashima. Does that last name ring a bell at all?"

She thought for a moment. "Can't say that it does."

"Well, _Keitaro _Urashima is one of the head honchos for the local Lycans. Near as we can tell, this Hina Urashima is his grandmother."

The leader looked puzzled. "This Keitaro Urashima has a living human grandmother? I thought you said he was one of their leaders? How can that be if he's so young?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. But we've got a pretty good database of the leadership of both halves of the enemy, and Keitaro's name is in there."

She still looked confused. He kept talking.

"But anyway, it gets better. I was able to find a list of people who have claimed that place as their permanent address. I ran that list against our database and came up with another match ... does the name 'Aoyama' mean anything to you?"

The leader sighed. "I'm sorry, I've got better things to do than memorize every name in our database. By all means, enlighten me."

"I can't."

She cocked an eyebrow. "What do you mean you can't?"

"Just that. I can't. There's no information in that entry, only the name. Whatever information may have been in this entry has been deleted. I've never seen an entry like this in our database before. The person who actually lives at that old inn is named Motoko Aoyama. I did some digging on her, and by all appearances she's just an ordinary human. The actual name in our database is Tsuruko Aoyama, who is Motoko's older sister, and she too is just another human according to all the information we can find."

"So why is her name in our database? What has she got to do with us?"

The computer operator smiled widely. "I have no idea," he said. "But I'm starting to share your idea that we might just be onto something here. I sent this information to the brass and asked if they had any information on Tsuruko, and they said no. But why would they have put some random human's name into our database? It doesn't make sense. She has to mean something, either to us or to the enemy. There must have been some information about her in that file at one time, because it's been modified several times in these past few months and then deleted entirely about one month ago. The database safeguards won't let the entire file be deleted, otherwise I'm sure we wouldn't have gotten this match at all."

She nodded for him to continue.

"A human relative of one of the local Lycan leaders owns the inn where we followed that girl out of the local vampire headquarters, and a relative of this Tsuruko who's in our database lives there too. That can't all be a coincidence. And why are our own leaders covering up who this Tsuruko really is and what she's got to do with immortal affairs? Something smells fishy."

"Did you find out who that girl that we followed was?"

"Based on her apparent age compared to the dates of birth listed for the residents, we were able to narrow it down to four possibilities - Mitsune Konno, Naru Narusegawa, Mutsumi Otohime, or possibly even this Motoko Aoyama."

"You said that Hina Urashima is the grandmother of Keitaro Urashima. Where is she now?"

"She left the country, but we don't really know where she is now."

The leader thought to herself for a minute or two, and then issued her next order.

"Alright, the issue with this Tsuruko Aoyama is a curious mystery to be sure, but I don't see the immediate application for committing any more time towards solving it. For now, make your new priority to find out everything you can about those four girls you mentioned. I still think that our best shot at a useful lead lies with the girl we followed out of our enemy's headquarters. Though as you research Motoko Aoyama, stay sharp for anything interesting about her sister while you're at it. I must admit, I'm curious too "

Her companion and his assistants all nodded in acknowledgement, and she turned around and started out the door to leave them to their business.

"Oh," she threw in, as she stuck her head back into the room after walking out, "I'll take that 10,000 yen in two 5,000 yen bills, please."


	33. Dearest Blood

Naru slowly and groggily woke up as sunlight from her open window began to spill into her eyes. She had only had that one glass of sake the night before, but her emotional exhaustion had caught up with her at bedtime and she had slept like a rock. Apparently everyone else had thought it best to leave her alone, which she appreciated - her relaxing soak in the hot spring the night before had perhaps saved her from an embarrassing breakdown, but it was no substitute for a good night's sleep.

She sat up blinking quickly for a moment, still a little bit dazed. After she let herself come to a little more, she started thinking about what to do today. In the past, when Keitaro was gone on his 'business trips,' Naru had helped pass the time by becoming more active than usual in her role in the maintenance of the apartments, and more out of automatic response to Keitaro's absence than anything else, she started to think of what she could do to be useful.

"_Oh yeah," _she thought to herself, as Keitaro's one instruction to her other than 'go home' played back in her mental theatre. _"I had better go find Suu."_ She chose not to replay any other part of that particular conversation. Naru pulled herself out of bed, put away her bedroll, and got changed for the day. On her way downstairs, she stopped by Suu's room, but Suu wasn't in there.

As it turned out, Naru had woken up about an hour after breakfast. Shinobu had seen Naru as she left the hot spring the previous night and as such had left Naru some food in the refrigerator. The young cook was still lingering in the kitchen when Naru walked in.

Shinobu looked up as she heard someone coming around the corner, and bowed politely when she saw who it was. "Good morning, Naru," she said simply but courteously. Since Naru hadn't been there and everyone else had been insatiably curious, Haruka had told them all everything she knew about the night before at the breakfast table. Shinobu opted not to make mention of any of it.

Naru smiled back at her. "And to you. Sorry I missed breakfast."

"It's alright, I saved some for you. It's in the fridge."

Naru bowed her head. "Thank you, Shinobu. You always take such good care of us."

Shinobu just smiled.

"Say, I don't suppose you have any idea where Suu might be right now, would you?" Naru asked.

"I ... umm ..." Shinobu began, but she was obviously uncomfortable with the question, or at least with her answer.

Naru was puzzled. "What's wrong?"

"Well ... this morning, Haruka said that you and Suu are not to be left alone together until Keitaro gets back. So ... if you want to see her, I'm supposed to go with you," Shinobu said sheepishly, seemingly embarrassed to talk down to Naru in this way.

Naru half-grimaced, half-grinned at Shinobu's words. _"Touché Haruka, touché ..." _she thought to herself. "That's fine," were Naru's words. "Would you like to finish up what you're doing first?"

Shinobu was relieved that Naru did not seem offended. "I'm not really doing anything right now, so now's OK with me."

Naru was in fact a little irked, but not with Shinobu. In her own mind she knew that Haruka could hardly be blamed for leaving the others with this instruction, but it was not in Naru's nature to take belittlement - deserved or not - with a smile on her face. But she sucked it up for now and walked with Shinobu to where the latter had last seen Suu.

* * *

Shinobu took Naru out to a small shed in the back that Suu had been using as her personal warehouse. The door to the shed was open, and as the two of them came within line of sight of the front, Naru saw that Haruka was one step ahead of her again. A bunch of Suu's equipment and papers had been pulled out and was spread out in front of the shed, and Haruka and Motoko were rummaging through it while an obviously reluctant Suu stood on, looking unhappy. There was a medium-sized plastic bin between the older women and the two of them were putting more things into it as they searched through the piles.

Motoko and Haruka noticed Shinobu and Naru before either of the latter could say anything.

"Good morning, Naru," said Haruka, in her standard tone of voice. Motoko nodded to Naru as well.

"Good morning everyone," replied Naru, and looking over all the mechanical stuff and papers laid out in front of her, she said, "what are you guys doing?"

Haruka and Motoko both shot Naru a mildly reprimanding but gentle look. "We're cleaning Suu out of all her information and gear that she used to build those locator units for tracking Keitaro," Haruka said firmly but not unkindly. "I'm sure he wouldn't want it falling into the wrong hands." The implication of Haruka's second sentence was clear, but so was her implication that she was not trying to pick another fight.

"I tried to tell them about the biometric secur ..." Suu tried to explain, but a stern glance from Motoko convinced Suu not to argue the point. Suu just stopped talking and looked away.

Naru really did not want to invite conversation on the topic of the previous night, and that precluded all the thoughts that came immediately to her mind for a response. Haruka spared everyone from the awkward silence by throwing Naru an exit.

"Over the past few days I've been putting together a fix-it list of some little things that I've been noticing around here lately. It's sitting on the table in the lounge. If you're fully ready for the day, I'd appreciate it if you'd get started on them. Motoko, Suu and I will be around to help you in a little while."

"Absolutely," Naru replied simply, again catching the underlying meaning behind Haruka's words. Not for the first time did Naru find herself feeling incredibly grateful that Haruka was a more understanding and forgiving person than she herself sometimes tended to be. The notion to offer another apology for the other night occurred to Naru briefly, but equally quickly she realized that the situation was probably best served by accepting Haruka's subliminal offer to let a sleeping dog lie and move on. Naru instead offered Haruka a polite bow and turned and walked away. Shinobu returned to the kitchen to finish up the last bits of her work there.

* * *

The obnoxious buzz of an intercom jolted the leader of the vampire stakeout team out of sleep. More out of motor reflex than of actually being awake, she reached over and tapped a button on the intercom.

"Is it important?" She asked bluntly, in a tone of voice that made clear her desire not to be bothered unless it was.

"**Yes it is," **came a curiously unreadable voice from the intercom.

She sat up and blinked her eyes a few times. "Alright, I'll be right down," she said.

It was, of course, a different shift of researchers on duty in the computer room as she opened the door and walked inside, the rest of the night crew that she personally worked with still being asleep. But she knew the vampire who was in charge of this shift, and she purposefully walked over to where he was sitting.

"What have you got?" She asked.

"A new assignment." He replied simply.

She blinked and shook her head a couple times. "Come again?"

"See for yourself." He motioned to his computer screen. She leaned over his shoulder and began to read.

"Excellent work, recon and research team. Your performance has been exemplary. Thanks to the information and leads on information have led to a course of action being decided upon that will contribute greatly to our war effort. A Distinguished Service Bonus has been added to all of your accounts.

No further research on this matter is necessary. Please revert to your previous stakeout and general research duties.

The email bore the signature of the Regent in command of the entire operation in Japan. She raised an eyebrow.

"Did you guys find out something that I was not made aware of?" She asked.

The shift leader shook his head. "Nope. Nothing groundbreaking enough to warrant this kind of response from the Regent himself."

"Is this all that the brass sent us? No further explanation at all?"

"You're seeing what I've seen."

She thought for a moment. It certainly didn't seem to her as though her job was finished, and this strange response from the Regent at a strange time to a strange situation really made her wonder exactly what it was that she and her team had stumbled onto. She and her team had a high security clearance, and even she had to doubt that whatever this scenario was all about that it was out of their league. But, although her curiosity was piqued, she knew how to follow orders, and if the Regent himself was apparently watching her work, then now was not the time to start disobeying them.

"Well, I really don't understand, but orders are orders, and if they want to pay us to sit on our asses again, well it's their money isn't it? Let's seal up this case and get back to what we were doing before," she said with a slight sigh.

He met her words with a nod of acknowledgement.

"Anything else?" She asked with a yawn.

"No, I just thought you'd want to know about the change of course."

"Thank you. But for now, I'm going back to bed."

With that, she turned around and headed back to her quarters.

* * *

In a different part of the foreign vampires' headquarters, a small group of much higher ranking officials and the Regent stood around a small table where a map and an assortment of other papers were scattered. At this moment, the vampires were all more interested in the map than anything else.

"Are you sure about this? We could be opening up a big can of worms on ourselves if we're wrong," said one of the vampires around the table, addressing the rest of them together but one vampire in particular, who was the loudest proponent of the plan that they had been discussing.

"Yes, I'm sure. As you know, Source Whisper has already provided us with a myriad of useful, verified information, even if the execution of the actions based on that information has been an obscene display of ineptitude thus far. But then this strike is not based solely on Whisper's information either - remember that it was the discoveries of our own research team that prompted us to seek confirmation from Whisper in the first place."

The voice of dissent still seemed hesitant, but nevertheless he nodded his consent.

The proponent spoke again. "We've lost the initiative in this war. This strike will put the ball back in our court, and will do so with negligible risk to our own forces at that."

A few glances were exchanged and then the Regent turned to the proponent and said, "Alright. Your plan has my approval."

The other officials exchanged one more glance with one another and then all but the lead proponent silently walked out of the room. Once he and the Regent were alone, the latter turned to his subordinate and spoke again.

"I hope this truly is the break that you seem to think it is," he said solemnly. "You're absolutely right about one thing at least, this campaign to date has been a humiliating stain on all of our records. We're all going to end up in the drink if we don't start producing happy results, and damn soon."

"Don't worry, sir. I promise you this will give us those results," was the soft-spoken but confident reply.

"Can you get it done tonight?"

"Of course I can, sir. I presumed your approval and all arrangements have already been made."

The Regent cracked the faintest of grins. "Good work. Then I guess there's nothing left to do here but wait and see what happens."

Salutes were exchanged, and the last official left the room.

* * *

As the day carried on into the evening, Keitaro and Kanako began to stir from a long and dearly needed sleep. The previous morning, as a part of her 'interpretation' of Keitaro's request to help him forget about Naru for the time being, Kanako had again stripped down in full view of Keitaro before her shower, but this time Keitaro had taken it with a grain of salt, shaking his head slightly, breaking into an ear-to-ear grin and letting out a quiet chuckle. Kanako had then picked up her naginata and struck a couple of uncharacteristically goofy poses with it, which had drawn genuine amusement out of Keitaro. For his part, Keitaro was a bit uncomfortable deliberately and continuously watching Kanako naked, but he was fast getting used to seeing her unclothed form, and given his very real wish to get Naru out of his head combined with his receptiveness to a cheer-up meant that Keitaro was indeed in a better mood by the time Kanako had actually gotten into the shower. Of course, Kanako was feeling pretty upbeat herself by that time too. When she had first fully realized the extent of Keitaro and Naru's relationship, she felt a bit daunted by her task of discrediting Naru, but that ridiculous human's own foolishness was making Kanako feel a lot better about the matter. So both of them had gone to bed in good spirits and had managed a geed night's sleep. Keitaro woke up first, and Kanako, being a light sleeper, woke up to the soft noise of Keitaro getting out of bed and straightening out his sheets.

"Good evening, Kanako. Sorry if I woke you up," Keitaro said, in a quiet but friendly tone of voice.

Kanako smiled at him. "Sorrier than you'd be if you'd have just left me here sleeping and watched me scramble into work half-dressed and an hour late?"

As Kanako pulled off her sheets and got out of bed herself, Keitaro laughed. "Half-dressed, my ass. It seems to be all or nothing with you."

Kanako smiled wryly as she walked over to the small dresser. "You got me there," she said with a short chuckle of her own as she produced some underwear out of the small dresser in the room and put it on. Keitaro was wearing a pair of shorts, and after he gathered his own change of clothes for the day, with an almost teasing sort of smile he mercilessly spited Kanako's celebration of public nudity by ducking into the bathroom to get dressed himself.

* * *

Once they were fully prepared for the day, Keitaro and Kanako assembled their teams to brief them on the nature of their next mission, and also to meet the replacement members for the casualties of the last battle - Rikyo's contributions had just arrived on site as Keitaro and Kanako made it to the conference room. After the round of introductions, Kanako paged the interrogators and code breakers to check for updates. The code breakers had deciphered most of the rest of the captured documents, but based on what they could read they found little reason to believe that the information they sought was in there - the documents were primarily detailed information on what were supposed to be the targets for the strike that had been disrupted, as well as detailed information on planned future attacks. Although extra defenses would be prepared at targets mentioned next in line, the latter information was now considered invalid as the enemy should have assumed that their documents had been captured and decoded. Better luck had been had by the interrogators. Crafty questioning had elicited a slip of the tongue from one of the weary prisoners, and another starting point had been found out. The interrogators involved did not believe it was the enemy headquarters, but it was something to check out nonetheless. It did not take long to get a fix on the most likely building, and the teams started planning a reconnaissance mission. As with their previous mission, Keitaro and Kanako planned to lead from the front.

* * *

"**Kanako? Mr. Urashima?" **Came a voice through the intercom in the conference room, startling everyone in the room and interrupting the several different lines of conversation.

Kanako responded first this time, as she happened to be standing within arm's reach of an intercom unit. Clicking the button, she said, "We're both in here. What can we do for you?"

"**Please report to C&C immediately, a new situation has just come to light that the two of you should be aware of."**

Kanako and Keitaro exchanged a glance for a moment, and then Kanako turned to one of her officers.

"Will you handle things here for a moment, please?" She asked.

"Of course," was the officer's reply.

With that, Keitaro and Kanako nodded to each other and the two of them left the room together.

* * *

"Yes! I'm positive! You think I'd pass up something like this without making a careful note of it! I'm telling you, it's this building, this room! I saw it with my own eyes!" Keitaro, Kanako, a few other officials and Gennai were standing around a large computer screen along with the vampire who was excitedly pointing to the image of the aforementioned location on said building that was the object of everyone's attention.

Gennai looked to his excited underling with patience but also with a slight hint of skepticism. "Tell me again exactly how you managed to see this in the first place? That's a room on the 8th floor in a building with semi-reflective windows."

At that moment, the young vampire seemed to become aware for the first time that he was almost rambling with excitement. He slowed himself down, took a few deep breaths, and started over.

"I'm sorry sir, I guess I was getting a little over-excited there. Anyway, I was across the street and just off to one side of that building right about ... there, and one of the guys with a scope moved in just such a way that the glint from one of the street lamps caught my eye. It was clearly in the shape of a scope lense and aimed at our headquarters, so I went into this building over here to get a better look. Once I was at their level, it was pretty easy to see. There was one guy with some big electronic scope of some sort, and a couple more with binoculars. They're scoping us out, sir, I swear it!"

Gennai wore a grave expression as he turned to Keitaro and Kanako. "I can't imagine that they'd be able to gather any terribly useful intelligence just from watching us from afar like that. Any unauthorized bugs would be blocked by our automated counterintelligence system, and there's no way they could see through our windows from that far away or eavesdrop electronically without the data tap being noticed. It also seems unlikely that they would risk a frontal attack on our headquarters while we are at full strength. But if they are tracking anyone who comes and goes from here, that combined with what we already know they know could mean that they are putting together a picture of our entire infrastructure."

"Sir, we can take a small team over there and shut them down, and find out exactly what they have been doing in the process. If we leave individually, head off in different directions, and then meet up and get into that building while outside their line of sight, we can get to them without alerting them first," said Kanako purposefully, her tone of voice sharing Gennai's sense of alarm for the situation.

Gennai nodded firmly. "Do it."

Keitaro and Kanako made a beeline back to the conference room, where they recruited 8 troops from their combined teams. They sent their teammates down to the armory and told them to gather full battle gear into duffle bags and wait for them there. Keitaro and Kanako then quickly returned to their quarters, where Kanako was keeping her custom weapon and Keitaro his custom armor. Quickly grabbing those and some other preferred items as well as their own bags, they hurried to the armory.

* * *

"Where are all those guys with the big bags going? They're all going in different directions!" Exclaimed on of the observers as he watched Keitaro and Kanako's group leave their headquarters.

"Maybe they're sending their staff on vacation again," said another observer with a smirk.

"Recognize any faces?"

After scanning the figures until they were all out of sight, the observer with the scope replied, "Nope. Certainly nobody too terribly important down there. Maybe you were right, perhaps they are sending their staff on vacation again."

"Should we send someone to follow them anyway?"

The leader, who had been listening without much interest from farther back in the room, finally decided to speak. "No. A bunch of grunts on vacation is of no great interest."

* * *

After the group reconvened against the side of the building, they made their way, single file, against the side of the building. Once inside, they got into an elevator. Once the door closed, Keitaro reached up and pulled off the latex mask that Kanako had given him, and the rest of the team took his cue and did the same.

"Good thinking with the masks, Kanako. I have had time to forget about this specialty of yours," Keitaro said to Kanako with a wink.

Kanako smiled and slowly peeled off her own mask. "I used to do this all the time. I just realized right before we left that until now I haven't put on a single mask since we joined up on Rikyo's island."

"Why is that?"

Kanako gave a brief but sincere thought at telling him what she had figured the answer to be, but then thought better of it. "Ask me again later, I don't think this is the time or the place," she replied, then turned to Keitaro and smiled at him.

* * *

When they reached the 8th floor, the whole team went into the men's restroom. Making sure that it was empty, one of the team locked the door, and then they all opened their duffle bags, revealing armor and weapons. They all donned their protective wear, and, concealing their suppressed carbines for the moment inside the now empty duffle bags, unlocked the door, and then Keitaro peeked outside.

"All clear," he said softly. "The room is just down the hall, let's be quick about this."

The team hustled quietly over to the proper door. With their weapons still covered with the bags, four of the team covered while the other four faced the door. Keitaro and Kanako were both part of the latter group. Shielded pretty well by the rest of the team, the inner four uncovered their guns and then Kanako silently stuck a decoy key card into the slot, and typed for a moment on the small keyboard that was attached to it by a small wire.

* * *

None of the foreign reconnaissance vampires seemed the slightest bit prepared for this contingency as Kanako swiftly but silently flung the door open. With Kanako in the lead and Keitaro right behind her, they had the leader and all the observers pinned at gunpoint before they had much of a chance to react. Hearing the commotion, the two other foreign vampires who attempted to rush in from a small side room were shot down before they even made it to the room. No foreign vampire got off a single round before they were all either dead or securely captured. It was over in less than 10 seconds.

With the blade of her naginata pressed against the back of the leader's neck, Kanako hissed, "Are there any more of you?"

"Go fuck yourse ..." The leader never got to finish her sentence, as Kanako swung the blunt end of her weapon around and cracked it hard into the side of her head. The wet crunch of a skull being cracked was heard by everyone in the room. Turning her attention then to one of the observers, who seemed far less resolute, she repeated her question in an even less friendly tone of hiss. "Are there any more of you?"

"No," was the subdued reply.

Without missing a beat, Kanako pulled a radio out of her cloak. "Home Base, do you read me?"

"**Loud and clear."**

"Enemy spotting post secured. They've got a lot of equipment for us to carry back, would you please send us some extra cover?"

"**Roger that. Help is on the way."**

"Thank you," Kanako said, and then put away her radio.

Two of the team covered the bound prisoners with their carbines, Keitaro, Kanako and the rest of the team began to look around at the contents of the room. Keitaro was the first to take notice of a small pile of papers sitting next to a computer on a table in the small side room. The first few papers appeared to bear nothing of great consequence, but then Keitaro found a page where the word 'Hinata' jumped out at him. As he read on the color began to drain out of his face, and then behind that page there was a printed copy of an Email ...

* * *

"Alright everyone, listen carefully," began the leader of the strike squad, holding onto the roll beam inside the van with one hand and holding up a photograph with the other. "This individual is not to be killed. Knocked out if necessary, but not killed or permanently injured. Any and everyone else found in the building is fair game. Understood?"

Four heads in the back of the van nodded their acknowledgement.

"Good. Now keep in mind what our primary objective is. Make this as messy as possible. Use your imagination and have some fun. Is _that_ understood?"

Malicious chuckles accompanied the nods this time.

An equally malicious grin spread across the face of the speaker. "Tell me, have any of you ever tasted human blood before?"

"Nope." "Not me." "Of course not, it's against the rules." "No."

Now the speaker let out a very low chuckle. "Well, drink it up tonight, guys. We don't get exceptions to that rule very often!"

Hearty huzzahs answered him as the van sped onwards towards their target.

* * *

Haruka and Seta were both almost asleep when the phone rang. Both started at the first ring, and Haruka was the first to sit up. She blinked her eyes a few times before picking up the phone and putting it to her ear.

"Hello?" She said groggily.

"Haruka, this is Keitaro! Listen carefully! You have to get everyone out of there right now! There are foreign vampires coming your way as we speak! Get out!"

Haruka did a sort of mental double-take. "Keitaro, wha .."

"Haruka, PLEASE! Just get everyone out of there RIGHT NOW! I'm on my way, I'll meet you at the tea shop!"

Haruka opened her mouth to speak, but the click of the phone at the other end being hung up cut her off before she even began.

Keitaro's shouting had been loud enough for Seta to hear and understand it, and he was beginning to sense the rising tension in Haruka as well. As he sat up, Haruka turned and looked at him. They stared at each other for only a second or two before Haruka nodded a few times quickly, and then both of them swung themselves out of bed.

* * *

Shinobu gasped as she was literally yanked to her feet, abruptly snapping her out of sleep.

"We have to go," came a firm female voice. Shinobu recognized it immediately as Haruka's. Looking up at her with eyes wide with surprise, she saw the older woman with a look of what might have been fear on her face. She was wearing nothing but a robe herself, although she had a large duffle bag thrown over her left shoulder and was wearing a tactical belt with a pistol on her right hip. As Shinobu was almost carried into the hallway, she saw Seta with Sara similarly in tow, with Naru right behind him. All of them looked similarly distressed. Though she could not see them, Shinobu could hear the unmistakable sound of Suu being abducted against her will, and could just barely make out the sound of Motoko's reprimands over the top of it. As the group walked fast down the hall, they reached the door of Mutsumi's room as Motoko and the Suu met up with them. Pushing open the door, Haruka took a step inside the room and then halted.

"Where's Mutsumi?" Asked Haruka to no one in particular, her voice a tone of controlled anxiety. Turning around and seeing the looks of 'what?' on everyone's face, Haruka said, "She's not in her room!"

As more silence greeted Haruka's words, she turned quickly to Seta and then to Motoko. "You, please take Shinobu, Suu, Sara and Naru to the van and get to the tea shop. You're with me," she said to each of them respectively. Independently, both Seta and Naru seemed about to say something and then retracted. By now even Suu was appreciating the seriousness of the situation and was no longer resisting. The four of them silently hurried down the stairs.

"Let's split up. You take the bottom floors, I'll take the top. Do as fast a walk-through as you can and then get to the tea shop. If you see a vehicle approaching, drop what you're doing and get out. Understood?" Haruka said to Motoko.

Motoko's eyes narrowed. "Do you really think that I'm going leave anyone behind, you _or_ Mutsumi?"

Haruka knew that this was not the time to argue. "Alright. Just search fast. See you at the tea shop."

The two of them broke. In just over 10 minutes they met back up where they'd started.

"Nothing?" Asked Haruka.

Motoko held up a small slip of paper. "It's a note from Mutsumi. It says that she was expecting to be up at Tokyo U late tonight and that she would probably rent a room at the university inn instead of coming home in the wee hours of the morning."

Haruka breathed a sigh of relief. "And Kitsune is staying at Dr. Hasagawa's place tonight, right?"

Motoko nodded.

Haruka sighed again. "Thank goodness. Everyone is accounted for. Let's get out of here."

The two of them left through the back exit and ran for the tea shop.

* * *

"Lady? We're here." A very tired Mutsumi was jostled out of near-sleep by the voice of the taxi driver. Despite the fact that she had been attending a very popular seminar, it had never occurred to the absent-minded woman that the inn might be booked solid with other attendees. She shook her head a few times to wake up enough to talk coherently.

"Thank you, sir. Please keep the change," she said sweetly with a yawn, as she reached into her purse and passed the driver a small roll of money. Opening her door, she stepped out and closed it behind her, the cool night air invigorating her just enough to ensure that she would make it to her bed without dropping to sleep where she stood.

"Have a good night, Miss," the driver said through the open passenger side window, and then he drove away.

* * *

In had taken a lot of self-control among the foreign vampire strike team not to get out of their van and practice for their mission on the driver of the semi-truck who had managed to wreck his vehicle in just such a way that it had held up traffic for a good 15 minutes. They were less than ten miles away from their destination at that point, and the frustration was almost too much to bear. But finally they got through, and they sped like demons for the short duration of their trip.

* * *

As she turned on the kitchen light, Mutsumi thought that something felt very strange about the place tonight, but she wrote it off as just being sleep deprived. She had changed into her pajamas already, but between the front door and her room she had developed a hankering for a cup of tea. As she walked back towards the stairs with her mug, she heard a slight sound from the front door. Turning to look, she thought she saw the outlines of a person standing just outside the front door. The person seemed to be trying the door handle, but seemed to be having trouble.

Mutsumi smiled groggily. _"Kitsune's home? Maybe Koan got called into work and she accidentally left her keys in his car," _she thought to herself, as she smiled, walked over to the front door, unlocked it and opened it a crack.

"Kits ... oh ... hi there ..." Mutsumi began, breaking off from what she was going to say when she realized that it was not who she thought it was. There was a man standing there whom she'd never seen before in her life, his hand still on a lock pick that he had stuck into the keyhole in the door knob. He looked up at her.

"Is there something I can help you with?" asked Mutsumi, groggily and sounding sort of confused, but still sweet and friendly as ever.

"Motoko Aoyama?" Asked the man, in such an unfriendly tone of voice as to cause Mutsumi to start at it.

"No, my name is Mutsumi Otohime, but MoEEP!" Mutsumi's words turned into a startled yelp as the man at the door suddenly snapped the door open, the sharp edge of the door hitting Mutsumi hard in the forehead and knocking her to the ground. She lay stunned on the floor for a moment before unsteadily sitting up and putting her hand to her head. Feeling wetness, she pulled her hand down and saw that there was blood on it. Now no longer sure if she was awake or having a bad dream, she then looked up to the sound of footsteps.

"_Ara ara ..." _she whimpered, quietly and waveringly, as five other men, all with icy-blue, slightly fluorescent looking eyes, joined the first man and advanced menacingly towards her.

* * *

Seta had, of course, not been the only person to overhear Keitaro's frantic words into the phone. Kanako had started to walk into the side room just as Keitaro had slammed the phone down.

"Kanako, I have to go. Please take care of this, I'll be back as soon as I can," he had said, as he had attempted to speed past her. Kanako had turned to follow him and snagged his arm.

"Keitaro, I heard what you said. If there's an enemy strike force headed for Hinata, you can't stop them by yourself.."

"Then please come with me. But I have to go."

Kanako had turned and looked at a member of their team, who simply nodded in return. "Alright," she had said in an understanding tone of voice as she turned back to face Keitaro. "Let's go."

* * *

Now the two of them were speeding towards the Hinata Apartments in one of their team's assigned vehicles. Kanako had at least convinced Keitaro to let her drive, as she commented that Keitaro's driving in his agitated state would probably see them pulled over and thus substantially slow them down.

Keitaro sat in the passenger seat, trying very hard to stay calm. The papers he had found that indicated that the residents of the Hinata Apartments did not give any specific time, only that the strike was to be carried out tonight. He knew that if he had managed to give Haruka even half a decent warning time that she would have cleared the place out and gotten everyone to safety, but it was pretty late by the time he made his call. He closed his eyes and ran through every trick he'd ever learned about soothing frayed nerves.

Kanako, meanwhile, focused on driving as fast as she could without standing out too much from the very thin traffic that was out in this area at this time of night. As they drew closer, Kanako rounded a small hill, and in doing so they were now facing the Hinata Apartments directly. Kanako noticed a slight orange glow coming from ahead. Keitaro was still meditating with his eyes closed, but a bad feeling in Kanako's gut grew more and more sour as they got closer still. Finally, when they were only a few minutes away, Kanako drove past the last obstruction to a direct line of sight to the apartments. A few moments later, she pulled to a stop.

"Kei ... Keitaro ..."

Kanako's voice brought Keitaro out of his meditation gently, but the first sight that met his eyes might have stopped an ordinary human's heart altogether. As it was, he felt a pinch in his chest for more reasons than one as he opened his eyes to the sight of his beloved Hinata Apartments in flames. Jets of smoke shot out from holes in the roof where the ceiling had already caved in and bright orange flames burst forth from the windows as well as several holes where the wall had already been consumed. Keitaro skipped the whole pale routine completely and Kanako could have sworn his face turned a light shade of green as he opened his door and got out of the car in a sort of disbelieving daze. As he slowly started walking forward, Kanako got out of the car too and went over to his side. Looking up at his face, she saw no tears, just the sort of almost blank expression that one gets when their brain is trying furiously to reject something it has seen, though in Keitaro's case his expression also included one that suggested that he might be about to throw up. His breathing slowed and he stumbled once, but he shook his head a couple times and regained his balance.

Kanako's own heart was beginning to race, thought not really for the same reason. It was more Keitaro's distress than the situation itself that was wearing into her - she had, after all, only been to the Hinata Apartments once, and other than Haruka she hardly knew any of the other residents. However, she certainly did not wish harm upon any of them, not even Naru, though in that case it was more for Keitaro's sake. She knew Keitaro's sentimental side and was already beginning to worry about how this might affect him in the near future. Unfortunately, the destruction of his home was not to be the only thorn in Keitaro's psyché. At almost the exact same moment, both of their eyes fell on a crumpled human figure laying on the ground, off to the side of the bottom rung of stairs.

"Oh no ..." Keitaro stammered, and Kanako thought she noticed his face get a little greener as Keitaro bolted for the body. Kanako, vigilant of a trap, had her hand on the grip of her carbine as she ran behind him.

As Keitaro got close enough to see who it was and what condition they were in, his run slowed down to an unsteady walk. It was Mutsumi. Her clothes had been torn off, and even in the semi-fetal position in which she now lay, the number, types and locations of her injuries made it sickeningly clear that she had been tortured and abused in ways that Keitaro's brain wouldn't allow him to speculate upon. All over her body there were bruises, cuts, burns, and bites, and it looked as though her leg and a rib or two were probably broken as well. He could sense that she was alive, but he could also feel her life energy fading. When he made it to her side, Keitaro fell to his knees, turned and leaned away from her, and threw up.

At the sound he made, slowly Mutsumi opened her eyes. Her left eye was caked with dried blood and it seemed to take her a minute to focus in on him. When she seemed to recognize Keitaro, she slowly turned her head towards him and smiled.

"_K ... Kei ..." _she whispered weakly.

Keitaro seemed to choke back another urge to vomit as a stream of tears began to pour from his eyes and he turned to face her. "Mut ... sumi ... oh no ... oh no ..." Keitaro sputtered, now virtually frozen in horror.

"_Others ... safe ... no one else ... here," _Mutsumi managed, her voice still managing to sound sweet and soothing despite the horrific state of her.

Keitaro was absolutely petrified, and was almost unaware of the words that sputtered out of his mouth.

"Mutsumi .. oh no .. I'm so sorry ... I'm ... oh no ..."

"_Kei ..." _said Mutsumi, as she reached out gently touched his face with a bloody, unsteady hand. _"I always ... love ..." _

A tremor rippled through her whole body, and as her hand delicately fell from his face, her eyes closed about halfway, her head rolled to a neutral position, a last breath of air escaped her lungs, and Keitaro could sense the last of her life energy ebb away.

Keitaro turned around and threw up again.


	34. Reality Sinks In

Keitaro could hardly form a coherent thought over the sickness that now swept through his body, his mind and his heart alike.

Even in death, even with the pain that must have agonized her in her final moments, Mutsumi's facial expression was one of peace. Not fear, not agony, but peace, as though seeing Keitaro one last time had made the horror of what had happened to her go away. It contrasted sharply with her dreadfully mutilated body. With his hand over his mouth and his already bloodshot eyes opened wide with shock, Keitaro looked back down at her, but his psyché continued to violently reject what he saw. After few seconds, he turned around and threw up for a third time. When he recovered, he sat back up on his knees, and then, with his right hand over his mouth again and his left arm tucked against his stomach, he slowly leaned over until his forehead was touching Mutsumi's.

Kanako watched this in solemn silence. She gave Keitaro a respectful distance as he had his last moment with Mutsumi, and bowed her own head slightly as Keitaro bent over and touched his head to that of his now dead friend. Other than to Keitaro himself, Kanako had never felt especially close to anyone. It was true that she didn't think of Keitaro's friends as being on the same level as Keitaro and herself, and it was also true that she had intended to try and 'wean' Keitaro off from his human contacts. However, she had never intended for any harm to befall anyone at the Hinata Apartments, least of all Mutsumi, whom along with Shinobu had struck her as a truly benign person - something she could respect because she encountered it so rarely, human or otherwise. She had indeed been rather charmed by those two, no faint praise as Kanako was not easily charmed by anyone, and especially not a human. Though depending on her mood at the time she may have been reluctant to admit it, but she could not help but feel a slight twinge of sadness herself for the scene in front of her, even without the clinch in her chest that Keitaro's distress was causing her. Kanako would never wish such a fate on any good person, even if they were a mere human.

After a few minutes, Kanako slowly walked over to Keitaro and sat down on her knees beside him.

"I'm sorry, Keitaro," she said, softly and sympathetically. She had been looking down at Mutsumi's body as she spoke, and then looked over to Keitaro to look for a response.

Keitaro continued to weep quietly against Mutsumi's forehead for another few moments, and then shakily sat up and looked back at Kanako.

The sheer anguish on Keitaro's face caused Kanako to involuntarily start. Consolations were not a skill for which Kanako had much aptitude and as such she really didn't have a plan for what she was going to say right from the beginning, but at that moment she found herself robbed of any words at all.

However, the two of them were not left in the moment of awkward silence for long. Over the roar of the fire the sound of footsteps running towards them was heard, and they both turned their heads and looked towards the source.

* * *

Meanwhile, a very somber group formerly known as the residents of the now non-existent Hinata Apartments had been watching from the relative safety of Haruka's tea shop. Once everyone was secure inside, Haruka had finally told everyone else what was happening, and less than a minute later everyone watched with some anxiety as taxi cab drove by heading towards the apartments, followed a short while later by a large, unfamiliar van. In both cases the distance and the lighting meant that no occupants could be seen in either vehicle. The taxi quickly passed back by but the van had disappeared. The shop was on lower ground than the apartments and there was also a hill in between the two structures, so none of them had seen the drama unfolding on the ground level, but the top floor could be seen quite clearly from their location and the nearly simultaneous eruption of the whole building into flames had drawn a collective gasp from all of them, followed immediately by the disbelieving silence as each tried to come to terms with what they were seeing. Everyone knew that the building had been well insured - a reality made necessary by Suu's residence there - and for insurance purposes Haruka and then Keitaro had always maintained a careful inventory list of all the communal property, and had encouraged the others to record their own possessions as well. Everyone had obliged initially, but had gotten rather sloppy about updating their own lists over time, and of course all of them had had personal things, whose value was usually more sentimental than anything else, that could not be replaced in any case. In particular, Motoko had lost a lifetime's collection of martial arts memorabilia, some items of which had been genuine antiques or mementos of personal accomplishments, and Suu could never have hoped to keep track of all of her inventions, ideas and equipment. Time would tell if her shed out back had survived, but certainly all that which had been in her room was gone for good. To be sure, everyone was grateful that no one had been hurt, but any of them would have been a liar to say that they were unfazed at the loss of so many of the things that they treasured. And then, of course, there were years and years of golden memories that had been formed there ...

One by one, they had all started to look away from the windows and settled down into the tables where Haruka began to bring everyone tea, until Naru was the only one left at the window.

"_This is my fault ..." _Was all that Naru could think to herself. _"This is all my fault ..."_

"Naru? Why don't you come sit down. Keitaro should be here shortly, and we'll figure out what to do from there," Haruka said, in her standard tone of voice that didn't in of itself seem to acknowledge the fact that their home was burning down before their very eyes.

Naru made a very conscious effort to erase the look of frightened guilt from her face as she forced herself to tear her eyes from the window and turned around to face the others. There were no looks of anger or blame directed at her as she did so. In fact, no one but Haruka was looking at her at all. Everyone seemed lost in their own thoughts. Naru knew that she would have to answer to all of them for her part in making this happen at some point, but she was quick to decide not to rush the moment. Naru slowly went over to the table where Haruka had taken a seat and sat down herself. She meekly accepted the mug of tea that Haruka offered her.

* * *

Less than 5 minutes after their home had burst into flames, everyone noticed a single pair of headlights speeding down the road, heading away from the apartments. It was the same van that had passed the shop earlier. There was no reason for anyone to be in that area at this hour unless they lived there, and for anyone who lived beyond the apartments, there was no reason to pass through Hinata on the way out, as a much faster entrance to the freeway served the residential areas there. It was pretty obvious that these must be the perpetrators fleeing the scene of their crime.

In was another 20 minutes before the next vehicle came their way, a large, black SUV. It too sped by in the direction of the blaze.

Naru assumed that it was Keitaro in the SUV. Of all the people that she was afraid to face, he was at the top of the list. He had gotten colder with her than he ever had before when she had showed up at the Japanese vampire headquarters. She cringed as she thought of what his reaction would likely be now. She did her best to mentally prepare herself for the fearsome reaming that no doubt awaited her, and then the terrible sense of responsibility that she was feeling combined with her preference to take her lashes privately and not publicly, prompted her to slowly stand up and address Haruka, who sat across from her.

"I should go meet him," Naru said quietly.

In the dead silence of the tea shop, even Naru's soft words resonated loud and clear. Everyone looked over at her.

"He'll be coming here soon enough. Stay put," Haruka said, firmly but not unkindly.

"Someone should be there to tell him that everyone is safe. He might assume the worst otherwise," Naru said, almost visibly starting at the surprisingly rational reason she'd pulled out of nowhere.

Haruka seemed to digest this for a moment, and then nodded slightly. "Alright," she said simply.

Motoko stood up as well. "I'll go wi..."

"No," interrupted Naru, turning around and holding up her hand in a supporting gesture. "Please let me go alone."

With those words, she turned on her heels and walked straight out the door, breaking into a run before the door had even closed behind her.

* * *

As she ran, Naru was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that she had absolutely no idea what to say to Keitaro. Just how exactly was she supposed to 'apologize' for getting the Hinata Apartments burned to the ground? Even Keitaro's forgiveness must have its limits ...

Forcing those thoughts in her head to fall silent, she made the decision to just wait and see before making her own judgments. Fueled by the adrenaline of having such a heavy moment just around the corner, she covered the distance between the tea shop and the site of the apartments in record time. She slowed down for a moment to scan the area for Keitaro, but with the fire still blanketing the area with light, she spotted him almost immediately, and started running towards him. She recognized Kanako, but could not readily make out the third figure as Keitaro was slumped over it and his head covered the face. The figure was apparently nude and obviously female though, and the entire visible portion of it was covered with injuries.

"_One of the foreign vampires, perhaps? But Keitaro got here after they left, how could he have ..."_

Naru's thought process was halted in its tracks as both Kanako and Keitaro looked up in her direction, the latter thus exposing the face of the third figure.

* * *

Naru felt as though she'd just run smack into a brick wall. She was still a good 40 feet away from the three but the third face was unmistakable. Naru barely kept her balance as she stumbled to a stop. Her expression was becoming something rather like the one she'd worn on the night when Keitaro, Kitsune and herself had been attacked in the ditch all those years ago, when she'd looked down on Kitsune and then Keitaro after they'd been felled with their wounds. But the expression on Keitaro's face was more than enough to tell her that there would be no happy ending this time.

Naru remained frozen for a moment with her eyes locked into Keitaro's, until the latter looked away to one side and seemed to make an effort to compose himself. Naru's eyes began to tear up as she slowly resumed walking towards them. Naru didn't notice the barely restrained glare being served to her by Kanako. When Naru reached them, she unsteadily knelt down opposite of Keitaro, a couple of tears falling from her eyes onto Mutsumi's face as she did so. No one said anything for a moment.

"Keitaro ... oh my gosh ... I'm ... I'm ... sorry ..." Naru stammered in between her own choked sobs.

Keitaro gave no obvious response. After a short silence, Naru forced herself to look at him. He was looking away from her with his eyes closed, but his whole body was beginning to shake.

"Keitaro?"

At that moment, Naru felt a surge of anger radiate from Keitaro. She couldn't really tell if the anger was directed at her or not, but nevertheless her nervousness factor shot up about ten fold. An expression that might have been nervousness even crossed Kanako's face as Keitaro fell over to all fours and let out a short grunt. His body began to twitch and bulge, and his eyes opened to reveal the dull gray color that Naru immediately recognized. He also clenched his teeth, and his teeth seemed to be trying really hard to extend into fangs but not quite making it. As he grunted a few more times it became clear to both Naru and Kanako that he was resisting the change. His body contorted and cracked for perhaps a full minute before he seemed to get the notion to change forms under control. However, the enraged energy that had radiated from him was, if anything, only increasing in intensity as he swiftly shot to his feet.

"Ex ... cuse me ..." he sputtered, in a tone of voice that suggested that it was all he could do to mutter those two words in a coherent fashion, and then with that blink-of-an-eye speed he vanished from Naru's field of vision past a row of trees.

* * *

Naru had not yet had time to absorb the sight of Mutsumi's mutilated corpse, and as such she was not really able to even think about how she should react to Keitaro's response to her. Rather, with the tears still rolling down her face, she simply looked back and forth between Mutsumi's body and the direction in which Keitaro had run off a few times, and then just stared in the latter direction for a minute or two before she felt two red-hot needles burning into the back of her neck. Naru turned her head to see Kanako's cold, blue eyes paired with an open and unreserved look of loathing bearing fiercely down on her. An icy sliver of fear pierced Naru's grief, but after a few seconds Kanako moved her gaze off of her and stood up herself, silently starting to walk off in the direction that Keitaro had gone.

Naru's thoughts, or more so, her emotions, were spiraling out of control. Shocked grief from the grisly death of her friend mixed poorly with a geometrically rising sense of guilt, and was topped of with a dash of fear - however much she knew she deserved it, the consequences that would surely befall her for everything that had happened could hardly fail to inspire apprehension for the future. As such, there wasn't much in the way of rational thinking going on inside Naru's head when, as Kanako began to walk away, Naru rose shakily to her feet and stumbled slowly after her.

In the state she was in Naru was hardly stealthy in her movement - not that her best efforts to that end would have eluded Kanako's detection in any case - but Kanako gave no sign of acknowledging Naru's effort to catch up. Though what little remained of her cognitive powers was screaming at her to stop, some sort of automatic reaction led her to continue forward. Kanako was only walking at a normal pace, and so Naru was able to quickly close the distance.

"Kanako ... please, wai ..." Naru whimpered feebly as she got within arm's reach of Kanako, but before she could finish speaking Kanako whirled so that her right side was facing Naru, in the same motion drawing her naginata and whipping it up and out, so that within a fraction of a heartbeat Naru could almost feel the edge of the blade against her throat. With a quiet gasp, Naru was frozen in her tracks like a deer caught in the headlights of a car.

"I think you've done enough harm for one night," Kanako said coldly. "Now Keitaro is going to have to go into battle with this weighing him down." She motioned slightly to the scene just behind them with her head. Without changing the distance between her blade and Naru's throat, she drew herself closer to Naru, until there was only about a fist's width between their faces. With a tone of voice that twisted Naru's guts into a half-dozen different knots and with her eyes boring holes through Naru's own, Kanako said, "And if Keitaro gets hurt because of this little distraction, then what happened to Mutsumi over there will seem like a Swedish massage compared to what will happen to you."

Naru simply stood silently for a few moments, her whole body quivering with an assortment of unpleasant emotions, before Kanako released her from her fearsome spell by whirling back in the direction she had been going and resuming walking, gently replacing her weapon as she did so. Naru stood frozen in place for another minute or two before collapsing to her knees. Another moment later and she was curled into a ball on the ground, weeping quietly.

* * *

Kanako's own emotions were swirling as well as she quickened her pace in following Keitaro's track. It had taken every iota of Kanako's self-control, combined with her reluctant knowledge that such a thing still would not be likely to appease Keitaro, not to lay Naru's corpse alongside that of Mutsumi right there on the spot. From the moment she'd realized the extent of Keitaro's connections to his human life, her first, last and only thought on the matter had been that they represented Keitaro's weakest link, the easiest way for his enemies to upset and unbalance him. However, she had admittingly been impressed with the way Keitaro had managed to keep his two lives separate ... until that idiotic bitch that he seemed to think of as a girlfriend tied them together for him. Now the thing she had feared the most had come to pass sooner than she ever imagined it might. All thanks to Naru.

Kanako stewed only for a few more minutes before a primal roar, followed immediately by an audible crunch, then quickly followed up by more of both sounds, derailed her train of thought. Kanako broke into a run in the direction of the sound.

* * *

Had he been himself enough to be fully aware of what he was doing, Keitaro might have been surprised to realized that he felt no pain as he smashed his fist into the tree again. Not long after he'd cleared the line of sight of Naru and Kanako, he'd begun to lose control. Driven now more by rage than by conscientious thought, he had quickly succumbed to the change that he'd just managed to contain before, and from there much of what remained of 'Keitaro' retreated into a shell, and the machine of pure instinct that was left was going to lash out at something. Fortunately for anyone and anything else, there was nothing but trees in the immediate vicinity to be targeted. With incredible strength, Keitaro's clenched fist slammed into a tree that was almost as large around as he was, the resistance driving his claws through his palm. The tree cracked and splintered, and Keitaro withdrew his fist and struck again. The second strike left a splattering of his own blood on the wood, but cracked more of the trunk and started the tree leaning. Keitaro hit the tree again, and with a loud and long string of cracks the tree toppled over. He didn't miss a beat as he attacked the next tree over with similar vigor. He had no perception of the passing of time or the damage being done to his hand, but a minute later he instinctively turned to face the figure who burst in on him through the trees behind him.

* * *

Momentarily startled by the frenzied appearance of the Lycan before her, Kanako came to an abrupt stop. She knew it had to be Keitaro but she was surprised that she could barely sense anything 'Keitaro' about him at that moment. Were it not for Keitaro's distinctive armor that shifted forms with him, she might not have recognized him at all at first glance. Worse, the Lycan didn't seem to immediately recognize her either, and it quickly moved menacingly towards her with a bellowing roar.

Reflexively Kanako reached for her naginata, and had to remind herself who it was that she was going to use it on. She pressed the button on the handle, but as the other handle segments shot outwards, she flipped the weapon in her hand so that the bladeless end was facing Keitaro.

"Keitaro, it's me, Kanako," she said, shortly and anxiously, and she made sure her stance was definitively defensive in appearance.

Fortunately, after only a couple of steps toward her, Keitaro bellowed a different kind of roar - one that sounded almost like a roar of pain, and he fell to his knees. He roared again and then fell over to one side. Kanako lowered her weapon and hustled over to him.

As she reached him, he rolled up onto all fours, and then his body again began to undergo the motions of changing forms. His bulk bulged and then began to shrink, and his formidable fangs and claws began to retract. A few moments later, the transformation was finished. Keitaro, now back in his human form, broke into tears that screamed helpless rage and fell prostrate on the ground.

Kanako quietly closed her naginata back down, re-sheathed it under her cloak, and sat down on her knees beside him.

"It's ... this ... is my fault, Kanako ..." he whispered piteously between clenched teeth after a moment.

Kanako blinked her eyes and shook her head a few times. "What?"

"This is my fault! A dear friend is dead and our home is destroyed! Because of me! Because of my own weakness!" Keitaro said, louder this time, as he looked upwards but not towards Kanako.

Kanako was glad that Keitaro was not looking at her, for she was unable to conceal her expression of appalled disbelief. "Keitaro, what the hell are you talking about?"

"I should have figured that Naru might try to follow me in the first place! I should have been prepared to deal with this situation! I should have kept Naru in that holding cell until I could arrange for her to be properly escorted back home!"

Kanako could hardly believe her ears. _Naru's _stupidity brings death and destruction, and _Keitaro_ feels responsible for it? At the same time her admiration for Keitaro's heart and her loathing for the one who'd just broken it climbed up a few notches.

"Keitaro, if those things make it your fault, then it's the fault of everyone else back at HQ too. We were all taken by surprise by that security breach. But even if we had known about it, it wouldn't have made a difference. They were watching as Naru showed up at our door, and from the moment she stepped inside they probably took interest in her. Whether things turned out the way they did or whether the guards had booted her right out of there, it was too late from the moment Naru decided to come knocking."

Keitaro's head dropped again. Kanako gently put her hand on his shoulder and leaned over so that her face was closer to his. "Even if you'd have kept Naru in the cell, they would have found out who she was and traced her back to the Hinata Apartments eventually. It was totally outside your control. As it was, you did the best you could with the warning time you had. Were it not for your call to Haruka, then all of your friends _as well as_ our aunt would have ended up like Mutsumi."

An extra stream of tears came out of Keitaro's eyes as he contemplated the almost-was reality that Kanako had mentioned.

Kanako's eyes got a little watery too as she continued. "It's bad enough that these things have happened without you blaming yourself for them. You have done a very good job of keeping your two lives separate. It is not your fault if someone else is not as considerate of the consequences of their actions."

Keitaro's body slowed its shaking a little as Kanako spoke.

"Listen Keitaro, I know that you're the type who reflexively assumes responsibility for anything bad that happens. And as you well know, I do not hesitate to stick blame where it belongs. If you've ever listened to me before, hear me now; this is not your fault. There was nothing that you could have realistically done to prevent this from happening. Naru's actions are to blame, not yours."

Keitaro slowly looked over at Kanako. Kanako's expression was still sympathetic and concerned but also firm. Keitaro and Kanako locked eyes is silence for a minute or two, and then Keitaro slowly sat up. He embraced Kanako in a hug, a gesture that she returned, and then he began to cry into her shoulder.

* * *

Back at the tea shop, Naru's prolonged absence was beginning to cause concern. Haruka mentally slapped herself for letting Naru out of her sight again, but only a few minutes later, as she irately walked away from the shop towards the now dimming blaze that had been the Hinata Apartments, her expression changed from one of irate anger to one of startled alarm. Naru was slowly stumbling forward, towards the shop. She had just emerged from a line of small trees into Haruka field of vision. She did not have any obvious injuries but the look on her face was as though she'd just seen the end of the world. She now wore a sort of post-traumatic dazed expression and didn't even seem aware of Haruka's presence as she weakly walked forward.

"Naru? What's the matter? Where's Keitaro?" Haruka rattled of, as she dashed forward towards Naru. Naru didn't say anything, but just whimpered quietly. When Haruka reached Naru, she gently but firmly grabbed her shoulders and forced her to stop moving.

"Naru, are you alright? What's going on?"

Naru didn't answer, but just looked up at Haruka with a bland and spacey expression.

After a moment, Haruka just sighed and nodded. "OK, you get your ass back to the shop and stay there. I'll be right back," she said, and, letting go of Naru, she started to run towards what site of the apartments. She thought she heard the sound of Naru throwing up behind her as she pushed through the trees from where Naru had emerged.


	35. Now It's Personal

Despite her lack of true understanding of Keitaro's grief, Kanako's concern for Keitaro was genuine, as was a small and somewhat muted but nevertheless also genuine feeling of sadness for the needless demise of a charming and happy little human. Slowly Keitaro had seemed to draw some comfort from Kanako's embrace, and as the first hint of daybreak rose over the horizon, Kanako gently lifted Keitaro to his feet with her as she stood up, and she softly asked him to come back to headquarters with her. Keitaro was quite visibly drained of energy by that point, and she put his arm over her shoulders and slowly walked with him back to their vehicle. As she had both hoped for and anticipated, there was no one there waiting for them by that time.

* * *

Not a word was said for the entire drive back to HQ. Keitaro was at the stage where his subconscious mind was blocking out all thoughts and images related to Mutsumi and the Hinata Apartments, and so all that was left was complete and utter exhaustion. He almost nodded off several times along the way, only jarred back awake by some outside noise. As Kanako pulled into the below-ground garage beneath the headquarters building and parked the vehicle, Kanako gently tugged the shoulder plate of his armor to get his attention. He looked over at her.

"I can almost guarantee you that there are questions waiting for us when we get inside," Kanako said. "I will take care of things for now if you'd rather get some rest first."

Keitaro spoke his first words in hours. "Thank you," he said weakly and with a small, forced smile that wouldn't have fooled anyone about how he was feeling. Kanako bowed her head to him, and the two of them exited the vehicle.

* * *

The sun was shining by this time, and so as it turned out the only vampires that Keitaro and Kanako ran into on their way up to their room were security agents, none of whom questioned them. With Kanako in the lead, they entered their room, Kanako allowing Keitaro to pass and then closing the door behind her. Given the events of the previous night, Kanako didn't even try to play the stripping game with Keitaro, and with a polite bow she stepped into the bathroom as the two of them changed out of their battle dress. As it was, Keitaro only stripped down to his armor liners before climbing into bed. Kanako changed completely into a set of pajamas, and Keitaro was already asleep by the time she emerged. Quietly she walked between their beds and sat down on hers, facing Keitaro. He was facing her too, and Kanako studied his face. Shock was obviously shielding him from this new and unhappy reality for the time being, as she could no longer see the terrible sadness on his face that she had seen before. In the silence of their room, Kanako had her first opportunity to think about things for herself.

"_I'm so sorry, Keitaro," _Kanako thought. _"This is not how it was supposed to happen. This is not what I wanted, for you or for your friends."_

Kanako reflected on her earlier notions to work Keitaro out of his human life. She had been jealous then, she could admit that to herself now, and the more she thought about it, she was also forced to admit that it was more her desire to have Keitaro to herself than any inappropriateness of the situation that had driven her to take the actions that she did - deliberately creating tension between Keitaro and Naru and then whisking him away before reconciliations could be made. She knew that that would hurt him, but she had been positive that she could comfort Keitaro, convince him of her own better suitability as a mate for him than a human, and that everyone could live happily ever after in the end. Ironically, now it was perhaps the most brutal possible demonstration of the poor compatibility of humans and immortals that was forcing her to rethink her whole strategy - or more so, both the righteousness and likelihood of the ends she sought with it. Mutsumi had not even been Keitaro's consort, and Kanako had never before seen the sort of grief that she had seen Keitaro express over Mutsumi's death. It seemed to her that even after what she had seen at the Hinata Apartments before this incident, she had still sorely underestimated Keitaro's bond to his human friends. Kanako was still firm in her belief that these events of last night need not have happened were it not for Naru's inexcusable acts of selfish idiocy, but as she watched Keitaro sleep she could not help but contemplate her own role in them.

"_There was no way I could have known either that Naru would follow us or that she even had a means of doing so," _Kanako's inner monologue said as she continued to study Keitaro's face._ "Perhaps I have a share of the blame for the security breach of those enemy surveyors, but even had I known about them, once Naru had made herself visible to them there was nothing that I or anyone would have done differently that would have changed this outcome. There was no reason for us to think that the enemy would take interest in a human. Maybe if we'd have caught them sooner they'd have never seen Naru, but as it was it was only pure chance that we became aware of them at all. Had that happened about half an hour later than it did, then everyone at the Hinata Apartments would be dead right now. Of course I would have done things differently if I'd have known how things would turn out. But hindsight doesn't do the present any good."_

Kanako sat up, pulled the covers of her bed down a bit, and then climbed under them. _"Use this, Keitaro," _she thought as she reached for the light switch. _"Don't let it use you."_

_

* * *

_

Naru had startled everyone waiting at the tea shop when she came staggering to the door. The first surprise was the awful state of her as she came inside, and the second was her general irresponsiveness to the concerns and questions that were quickly directed at her. She would look at someone who was speaking to her, and she would emit a whimper, but that was all. Slowly but unerringly she had just walked over to the wall opposite of the front door and sat down, hiding her face in between her knees.

Fortunately for Naru, she was not to be subjected to this bombardment for too long. Haruka was not long behind her, and when she too appeared distressed - though composed - the questions were promptly redirected to her as she walked in the door.

"Haruka, what's going on?" "Where's Keitaro?" "What happened?" The questions came at her from everyone at once. Haruka solemnly held up her hand to silence them.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news," Haruka said once the room had gone silent, in a tone of voice that suggested that it was costing her a great deal of effort to remain as composed as she was. Even so, a single tear ran down her cheek as she continued.

"Motoko and I found a note from Mutsumi before we left the apartments saying that she was staying at the university inn tonight. I don't know what happened, but there was some kind of mistake. Apparently she decided to come home after all. It must have been her in that taxi that we saw earlier."

Several expressions in the room began to contort as they anticipated where this was going.

"Needless to say, she was there when those foreign vampires attacked ..." Haruka paused for a moment, seemingly to keep her own emotions under control.

"... they killed her. Mutsumi is dead."

Not surprisingly, there was little immediate reaction. No one thought for a minute that Haruka would ever joke about such a thing, but even under the circumstances of the moment, simply being told that a dear friend was dead was not the sort of thing that just sank in like a stone.

Haruka wiped the tear from her face. "I didn't see Keitaro. His vehicle was still there but there was no sign of him. Now it still seems as though the attacking vampires have left, and I doubt that Keitaro came here alone. Where ever he is, I'm sure he's OK."

Shock had for the most part not yet given way to grief among the other residents. Her relationship with Seta had greatly improved Haruka's capacity to deal with emotions, but they were still not a strong point for her. She did not want this moment to drag on. 

Wiping a fresh pair of tears from her face, Haruka shook her head and changed her tone of voice into something very close to her usual.

"Well, we need to do something about accommodations. You think we can take everyone between us, Seta?" She asked, as she looked over at him.

Seta nodded understandingly. "I should think so."

"Alright then. Shinobu, Motoko and Suu with me, Sara and Naru with Seta. Sound good?"

Numb nods answered her.

Haruka reached over and grabbed the bag she'd brought with her from the apartments. She zipped it open and pulled out a wad of money.

"I imagine we'll need some supplies. Let us stop by the store on the way out."

More silent nods were the response. As the girls slowly began to stir, Haruka pulled Seta aside.

"You should probably call Kitsune and tell her what happened, lest she tries to come home tomorrow without any forewarning and find a pile of ashes instead. I think Naru would benefit from her company right now too," she told him. "Let me give you Koan's number."

Haruka pulled a small phone book out of her bag, tore out a blank page, and then flipped to another page and copied down Koan's phone number. Handing it to him, she said, "I figured that you and Kitsune could offer Naru more comfort than I can, she and I have had a few ups-and-downs lately."

Seta gave another understanding nod, and then he and Haruka gave each other a quick hug. When they parted, Seta walked over to where Naru was huddle against the wall and gently lifted her to her feet. "It's time to go," he told her softly, and although she made no reply she followed him under her own power. Everyone else followed to Seta's van, where as was the norm when there were multiple passengers Haruka played the part of driver. The occasional muffled sob and nothing else from within the van broke the silence as they drove.

* * *

At the store, everyone went their own way as they gathered what they needed. After they were finished at the store, Seta dropped Haruka and her charges off at Haruka's house, and went on to his own apartment with Naru and Sara. After seeing Sara to her room and setting up Naru as best he could, Seta made the call to Kitsune.

* * *

Keitaro was again awake before Kanako, but as before even the slight noise that he made while getting ready for the night was enough to wake her up. Not that it made much of a difference so far as waking Kanako was concerned, but it seemed like he was going about his business with slightly less care towards being quiet as he had in the past. Kanako quickly noticed the greater energy of Keitaro this evening. Sitting up, she was surprised to see him already almost completely dressed. His facial expression was one of cold determination.

"Keitaro? What are you doing?" Kanako asked softly, still coming out of her sleep.

"I'm going to have a little chat with our prisoners from the enemy stakeout," he replied, in a sort of voice that Kanako had never once heard out of Keitaro in all her life. There was unbridled hatred in his voice. Malice. Threat. Instantly, though only momentarily, Kanako was taken aback. While she could hardly blame him given the circumstances, and given the fact that they were involved in a war she had anticipated seeing them sooner or later, now that she was actually seeing these emotions out of Keitaro, she immediately found that it made her uncomfortable. However, Kanako was good at thinking on the fly. As Keitaro finished getting dressed and made for the door, Kanako flung the covers off of her, rolled out of the bed, and slid herself in between Keitaro and his destination.

"You'd better lose this idea that you'll be going at it alone from now on before you even get it," Kanako said, in a voice that managed to be quite firm and yet understanding and un-scolding. "Never forget that it was rash actions that caused the events of last night in the first place. Anytime you face the enemy, I at the very least stand beside you."

Keitaro absorbed Kanako's words for a moment, and then closed his eyes and nodded silently in acknowledgement. Kanako waited for him to look at her again before continuing.

"Now ... I have some experience with interrogations. I assume you intend to find out from them who ordered and carried out the strike against the Hinata Apartments, and where they are. I can help you. It's not as simple as beating the information out of your prisoner. Will you wait long enough for me to get dressed so that I may join you?"

Keitaro nodded again.

"Good. While I get ready, let's talk about what we're going to do."

Kanaka undressed and re-clothed herself in front of Keitaro again, but this time that situation was the farthest from either of their minds as the two of them intently talked about what they were going to do.

* * *

There holding cells were more heavily guarded than they had been when Naru was their only prisoner, now that immortals were being held there. They seemed a little surprised to see Keitaro, but only for a second, as Kanako followed in his footsteps and she was no stranger to the detention area when there were prisoners there.

"We wish to interrogate the prisoners. Please unlock the interrogation room and move the prisoners there," Kanako said to the commanding officer of the guard detachment.

"Yes mam," was the prompt reply, and the officer barked out his orders to his own subordinates. There were only three prisoners, and of them only the one that had been the leader offered any resistance as she was dragged out of her cell, but the resistance was quite futile, as the three guards who carried her had her well under control. Keitaro and Kanako followed them to the interrogation room, a rectangular room with various means of restraint on one wall, and a formidable array of 'tongue looseners' on the other. It was designed for interrogating up to 6 prisoners at once, with double that number of interrogators, so it was rather spacious after the three prisoners were bound to the wall and the guards left the room, leaving only the prisoners and Keitaro and Kanako.

Kanako could hear Keitaro's heartbeat and his breathing quicken in pace as the two of them silently walked over to the leader of the prisoners so that each of them was standing to one side of her. When they were about an arm's length away from the prisoner, they stopped.

The leader regarded them with a huff of contempt. "Make sure you enjoy this now, because when this is all over and we're on opposite sides of the rack, you'll be the ones cursing every moment of this night," she said, her eyes going back and forth between Keitaro and Kanako's faces and her voice successfully continuing her message of contempt.

It was costing Keitaro no small effort to hold himself back, and Kanako knew it. She had drilled Keitaro with the fact that however satisfying it might be to slay insolent prisoners immediately, it was not conducive of getting information out of them. Keitaro had seemed convinced by the end of their conversation, but it was obvious that he was on edge from the start, and Kanako could feel an aura of rage reappearing around Keitaro not at all unlike the one she had seen the night before.

"I understand the three of you were part of an operation that identified a human leaving our headquarters and tracked her to an apartment complex in Hinata a few days ago," said Keitaro, his voice low and tense. The other two prisoners were obviously nervous, but the leader was still defiant.

"Wow ... was it all the surveillance gear you found that gave us away, or did you actually have to flip though our data files to figure that out?"

"I want to know who carried out the strike in Hinata, I want to know who ordered it, and I want to know where they all are."

"Well, all you had to do was ask ... go into a restroom, face away from the mirror, pull down your pants and bend over, and the..."

Keitaro's already thin line of control broke. As he began to change forms, he stabbed his fingers underneath the leader's sternum, blood gushing forth from the spot as talons sprouted from his fingertips. Even before he'd finished changing forms he exerted enormous force upwards, and his enemy's taunts abruptly turned into a strained expression of pain, the pressure making it impossible for her to continue to speak, let alone scream.

"If you're not going to help us, then there's no reason to keep you alive," Kanako said frankly. "Any information you can give us regarding locations is not going to be valid for long, as your leaders will have to assume that you were captured and that you would be made to spill the beans. They'll no doubt be relocating soon, so we're not going to play any games. Speak now, or forever rest in peace."

Against the pain, the leader shot Kanako another look of defiance. She was unable to speak, but she was able to communicate her message silently nonetheless. _"Fuck you," _she mouthed.

With a low growl, Keitaro redoubled the strength with which he lifted against the leader's ribs. Within an instant bones snapped audibly against the force applied to them and the vampire's mouth opened in a silent scream. Only a moment later still, and the cracking of bones was joined by the gruesome sound of ripping flesh, and the leader's face sank from an expression of agony to a neutral look of death as virtually her entire chest - and the better part of the organs contained therein - were violently torn from the rest of her body. Still not satisfied either with the example he was setting for the other prisoners or the beginning of his revenge, Keitaro lunged forward the short distance to bury his teeth in his enemy's face. More crunching of bone was heard as Keitaro vigorously shook his head a few times to rip out almost half of the leader's head as well, which after taking a few rumbling breaths he spat contemptuously out onto the floor alongside the remains of her chest.

Kanako, who was in her 'strictly business' mode, forced herself to watch this detachedly. Prior to Keitaro she had never even met a Lycan before, let alone seen one savagely tear apart an enemy not three feet to one side of her. In her short few years as a vampire she had already seen - and in some instances, been a part of - acts of violence not much less brutal than this. Even before Kanako had become a vampire she had long known that she was capable of just about anything given the right combination of circumstances, but the thought that Keitaro, the one person she had always remembered as hopelessly kind and gentle, was capable of this ... well, she had to remind herself that it was fueled by his love for his friend who had met a much worse demise than this because of the actions of the one he had just slain. But really, she told herself that and then pushed these thoughts out of her head and forced herself to think only about the mission at hand. With synchronization that must have appeared rehearsed, Kanako and Keitaro took a few steps to the left and positioned themselves in exactly the same manner as before in front of the next prisoner. He was trembling in fear and hyperventilating.

"So much for your commanding officer setting a good example, eh?" Kanako said with a smirk as she patted the prisoner on the shoulder. Her grin widened as the shaking prisoner looked over at her with wide eyes.

"Listen ... we realize that the two of you are just a couple of grunts. Tell us what we want to know and there's no reason why you and your friend here can't be moved into more agreeable quarters and either be traded for our own prisoners later on or just sit out this war to be freed when it's over."

Kanako spoke in a remarkably pal-around sort of voice. Her offer of a free ticket through the war might have been appealing enough to the impassionate conscripts as it was, but the slavering Lycan who stood beside her still dripping with the blood of their steadfast leader was a powerful incentive in its own right. The prisoner she spoke too seemed all but frantic to cooperate, but was too frightened to speak. He nodded eagerly instead.

Kanako closed her eyes, smiled, and nodded back, patting the prisoner's shoulder again as she did so. "A rational decision, my friend," Kanako said. Slowly, the Lycan backed away to a more comfortable distance, and Kanako walked over to a recorder mounted on the wall and turned it on. Turning back around, she grabbed on of the small chairs sitting nearby and sat down in it, crossing her legs, interlacing her fingers and resting then in her lap in what for her was a relatively uncommon lady-like gesture.

"Well, let's get this over with then. Answer my questions in full and this won't take long, and you two can put your worries away for a while. Yes?"

Both prisoners nodded eagerly.

Kanako cracked another wide grin and chuckled to herself. She'd never before had the opportunity to try the whole 'Beauty and the Beast' technique so literally, and even if these remaining two were not the most spirited prisoners she'd ever faced she was dryly amused by how well the prisoners were following her and Keitaro's script.

The prisoners did indeed answer Kanako's questions, and certainly seemed to hold nothing back. However, there wasn't much else that she wanted to know than where their headquarters was, and when after a short time that became the direct question, both prisoners hesitated. After a few moments of silence, when it became clear that they were having doubts about answering, Kanako shot up from her seat and in a flash was in the face of the prisoner she had addressed at the beginning, instantly changing her demeanor from almost friendly to frightening and full of warning.

"You're so close to being done, don't drop the ball now. Answer!" She shouted.

The prisoner looked away from her, clearly debating within his own mind which was the scarier, this Japanese vampire and her Lycan companion, or the wrath of this own people should he give their base away and be recaptured later. Kanako knew this look and was determined to influence the decision. She drew her weapon and pressed the button, the shaft segments shooting outwards even as she whipped the weapon around to smash the chains that held him to the wall. In a circular motion, she stuck the shaft behind the prisoner but pinned him instead with her hand.

"ANSWER!" Kanako screamed, her eyes now blazing blue and her fangs nearly touching the prisoner's nose. Before the prisoner could speak, her face contorted into one of fierceness, and using the shaft of her naginata she flung the startled prisoner into Keitaro's waiting arms. Also before the prisoner could give much of a reaction, Keitaro grabbed the loose ends of the chains still clinging to his cuffs and threw the prisoner to the ground, pinning him their with his foot. Snarling menacingly, he began to pull on the chains.

"No! Wait! Please! IaaaaAAHHH!" The prisoners' plea degenerated into a scream as both of his shoulders popped out of their sockets.

Kanako had been walking fast over to them as this happened, and as the prisoner screamed she reached the spot. She grabbed his hair and yanked his head backwards so that he was looking at her. In a quiet voice that was barely clear against the background noise and yet was more menacing still than her loudest yell - and with an appropriately supporting expression - she said one last time, "Where is your headquarters?"

"I ... can't ... tell ... GAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" The prisoner's eyes bulged as Keitaro ripped his arms completely off. Keitaro flung the arms to either side of him and pounced on the prisoner like a cat on a mouse. His jaws snapped shut around the prisoner's neck, instantly silencing his screams, and with a crunch Keitaro severed the head from the body. Standing up slowly and immediately fixing his gaze on the one remaining prisoner, he and Kanako both walked quickly and purposefully over to him, Keitaro still holding the vampire's head in his mouth. When they got close enough, Keitaro leaned back, then lunged forward and spat the severed head into the last prisoner's face, hitting him hard with it and splattering blood all over him.

"AAAAAHH! ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT! I'LL TELL YOU WHERE THE HEADQUARTERS IS!" Screamed the panicked survivor, struggling uselessly against his bindings and frantically trying to blink his companion's blood out of his eyes. Through the red haze though, he could see the Lycan's frame begin to bulge and contort, and then begin to shrink. Quickly Keitaro shifted back into his human form, but lost little of his menace as he stepped forward to almost touch his nose to the prisoner's face.

"Where?" Keitaro said simply, in a low and quiet voice much like the one Kanako had used on the second prisoner to die.

The prisoner quickly began to sputter off an address and directions, even throwing in what he knew about the layout and defenses of the place. Kanako nodded occasionally as he spoke but Keitaro remained unnervingly motionless, not even blinking as he bore his eyes into those of the prisoner. Not until the latter stopped talking and Keitaro and Kanako looked at each other did Keitaro so much as twitch.

"You think we can prepare a strike in time to hit them tonight?" Asked Keitaro.

Kanako shook her head. "No. Both Gennai and Rikyo's forces are too spread out right now defending all our assets to amass so large a strike on such short notice, and yours and my teams are too small for us to do this ourselves."

Kanako didn't like the look on Keitaro's face that suggested that he was considering something rash. Thinking quickly, she offered him another option.

"But we can scout out the place, make sure they're still there, get a feel for the area and the best way in, and track them should they move out before we're ready," Kanako said. "That's definitely something our teams can do."

Keitaro seemed to accept Kanako's alternative to attacking immediately, but only begrudgingly. Kanako walked over to the recording device and switched it off. Keitaro had returned his gaze to the prisoner, who was only just coming out of a state of genuine panic.

"Keitaro ..." came Kanako's voice, and without so much as a shake or a start he slowly turned away from the prisoner and started walking towards Kanako, who was standing in the doorway waiting for him. When he got to the door, he nodded to Kanako to go ahead.

Kanako started a bit herself as the door slammed shut immediately behind her.

The prisoner started too at the sudden noise, as he had been looking downwards in exhaustion at the time it happened. His heart began to race again as he watched Keitaro lock the door and then place both of his hands against it at shoulder width, leaning against it and taking a few deep breaths.

Keitaro could sense his enemy's fear, and that combined with the blood he could still taste in his mouth filled him with sadistic energy. He practically reveled in the gasp and the look of terror that came from the prisoner as he suddenly and swiftly turned to face him again and started walking forward, the light disappearing into Keitaro's dull gray eyes.

"This is for Mutsumi ... _bastard ..."_ Keitaro hissed in between his rapidly elongating teeth.

He quickened his pace towards the prisoner, and as his body again began to surge outwards in transformation, the vampire screamed, Keitaro roared, covered the remaining distance between them in the blink of an eye, and tried to keep his memory of Mutsumi's mutilated body in mind as he allowed his rage to take over.


	36. The Hunt

The screams and roars and other sounds of violence from within the interrogation room lasted maybe 5 minutes at most, before the cessation of the former shortly thereafter ended the latter two. Another minute or two later, the door opened again. Interrogations had been known to get messy before and the interrogation room was designed and stocked with that in mind, and as he stepped out of it Keitaro was already wiping copious amounts of blood out of his hair and off of his face and hands with a towel. His clothing though, was probably ruined, as no amount of washing was likely to get them completely clean again. Keitaro was panting slightly, and were it not for the look of gruesome satisfaction on his face _(and, of course, all the blood)_, he might have looked like nothing more than an athlete who'd just finished up a good game.

The guards elsewhere in the main area of the detention center had seen things not too different from this before, and were well-practiced in minding their own business as interrogations were undertaken. Ordinarily, this sight wouldn't have fazed Kanako very much either, but an unpleasant sense of discomfort was again making itself felt at this new and out-of-character image of Keitaro. She hoped the feeling wasn't apparent in her expression as her eyes met his.

"Let's get the team ready. We should head out immediately," Keitaro said, flatly and with no emotion other than determination, as he quickly exchanged his blood-soaked clothing for a fresh set he'd brought with him from his and Kanako's room.

"Alright. But ..."

Keitaro stopped dressing and looked over at her. His facial expression quickly convinced Kanako that what she was going to say should probably wait until she and Keitaro were alone.

"Nothing. You're right. We should move quickly, there's no telling when the enemy will move their headquarters."

Keitaro nodded shortly once, and then as soon as he had finished putting on fresh clothes, the two of them walked silently together to one of the conference rooms, where they paged their teammates. As they sat down next to one another at the head of the table to wait for them, Kanako spoke.

"Before we do this, there's something I'd like you to keep in mind," Kanako said softly as she turned her head towards Keitaro. Keitaro met her gaze, and his expression was still blank save for an unmistakable look of determination.

Kanako took a deep breath before continuing. Under different circumstances she would have left the matter alone until Keitaro had better regained his center, but because they were about to potentially head into combat, she felt it necessary to speak her mind now.

"I'll be honest. I'm worried about you. I won't lie to you and say that I understand what you're going through right now. I don't. But I do understand that you want to avenge Mutsumi and the destruction of your home. Remember that ultimate vengeance will be winning this war, and the only way that will happen is if we keep our cool and use our heads. Before we brief the team and head out, I want you to promise me something."

Keitaro knew where this was going, and it really wasn't something that he wanted to hear. But he also knew both that Kanako was right and that her concern for him was absolutely genuine, so he forced down the reactionary irritation that had risen at her words and did his best to calm himself down.

"And what's that?" Keitaro replied after a moment.

"Promise me that you won't do anything irrational while were out there. You will bring no justice to any of your friends or to yourself by harming our war effort by acting out on emotional impulse. Or even worse, by getting yourself killed. Remember, our mission for the time being is reconnaissance and we should not engage the enemy except in self-defense. When the time is right, you and I will personally lead our full force against them, and that will be the time for your revenge. Not now. Are you with me on this?"

For the first time Keitaro was aware of the way Kanako's words took some steam out of his runaway emotions. This realization surprised him, but only for a moment. Kanako had been one of very few people in Keitaro's life who had always had an innate ability to comfort him when he was upset. Keitaro took a deep breath.

"I promise," he replied, simply but sincerely.

Kanako smiled at him, but before she could say anything else the first of their teammates came through the door.

* * *

It took no more than 20 minutes for the entire team to arrive at the conference room, and the meeting itself was a relatively short affair too. Kanako played the part of the recording from the interrogation where the prisoner spoke of the location of his headquarters and aspects of its layout and defenses, and then Keitaro explained that they were going to scout out the site, get a feel for it and the area around it, track the enemy's movements if they should leave, and figure out the best way to attack once the forces necessary had been amassed. Dismissing the team with orders to be ready to move out in one hour, Keitaro and Kanako were again alone in the conference room.

* * *

"Let's get Rikyo and Gennai on the line and tell them what's going on," Keitaro said, after the very short moment of silence that passed after the last of the troops had left the room.

Kanako just nodded, and hit the speed dial button on the intercom for Gennai. Keitaro picked up the phone and dialed Rikyo's number, and then linked the phone line into the intercom system. After a couple of beeps and rings, both leaders answered almost simultaneously.

"Rikyo here." "This is Gennai."

"Good evening, sirs. This is Keitaro and Kanako Urashima," Keitaro said, doing a slight facial double-take as he realized how he had addressed Kanako and himself. "We have an important update for the both of you."

"Of course," said Rikyo.

"We've uncovered a strong lead on the location of the foreign vampire headquarters. We are preparing to go to this suspected site even as we speak to confirm or deny the validity of the lead. If our information is correct, we will need the bulk of both our forces to destroy the enemy invasion force in its entirety once and for all in a manner that presents both the greatest chance for success and poses the least risk to our people. We will contact the two of you again from the field once we know for sure one way or the other, but if this is indeed the real thing, then we will need to recall the troops that are protecting our various outposts at once to deal with it."

Kanako listened with a raised eyebrow as Keitaro spoke to both his and her superiors in this manner that sounded almost commanding. But the silence from the other end of the intercom didn't last long enough for her to think much of it.

"Good work, you two. Please contact us the moment this lead is confirmed or denied," Rikyo said to Keitaro and Kanako, and then he addressed his vampiric counterpart. "How long will it take you to marshal your troops, Gennai?"

"I'd say two nights, tops."

"Oh dear ... why is your army still on vacation? Didn't anyone tell you that we're at war? What are _my_ people supposed to do while we wait for yours to catch up?" Rikyo's grin almost seemed to make itself visible through the speaker. This was quickly matched by an audible chuckle from Gennai.

"Beware, old friend - during the course of this war your people might accidentally discover that Japan is a lot bigger than that little hole in the ocean that you call an island, and then you might just catch them spreading out a bit too."

Both leaders let out another short chuckle, and then Gennai addressed Keitaro and Kanako.

"Do the two of you need anything from us to facilitate your reconnaissance operation?"

Suddenly Kanako got an image in her head of Keitaro requesting whatever forces the two leaders had readily available, and she quickly thought to head that off.

"No thank you, sirs. Our team is quite adequate as it is for this purpose," she said, a look from Keitaro seeming to confirm Kanako's suspicion of what he had in mind.

"Very well then. Anything else for the moment?" Gennai asked.

"No sirs," Keitaro interjected, his voice going back to something unreadable.

"Then stay in touch, and the best of luck to you. See you when you get back," Gennai said, and then the faint beep of the closing of his intercom line was heard.

"You two look set to become legends in your own time. I'll look into setting you guys up with your own private island when this is over," said Rikyo, and then his line beeped closed too.

Keitaro was motionless and silent as Kanako slowly reached over the table and clicked off the intercom unit.

"The team should be ready within the hour. Let's go get ready ourselves," she said softly.

Keitaro just nodded, and the two of them made their way back to their room.

* * *

Neither Keitaro nor Kanako found anything to say as they dressed themselves in their armor and collected their weapons of choice. Only as they were about to leave their room did Kanako speak up.

"Don't forget your promise. Both as your professional partner in war and as a person who cares about you on the personal level, I expect you to keep your word," she said as she reached for the doorknob.

Keitaro seemed somewhat subdued by that time, and without any clear sign of resistance, he said simply, "I haven't forgotten."

With that, they left their room and headed down to the ready room where their team waited for them.

* * *

The briefing was short and to the point, not that there really was much of a point to make. They were to head to a known location, see if their enemy was there, watch and observe them if they were, and turn around and come home if they were not. With that, they filed out into the same black SUVs that they had used before, and drove out to the site.

* * *

Keitaro was out of his vehicle almost before it had even come to a complete stop. The urgency had returned to his demeanor, and much to Kanako's chagrin it was proving infectious to the rest of the team. Most of them were still riding high on their previous victory anyway, and no one other than Kanako knew anything about what had happened to Keitaro's home and his friend.

"Alright troops, this is just like before. Fan out, check out every building. Everyone stays in constant communication, and anyone finds anything, you let the rest of us know _last_ night. Right?" Keitaro said, addressing the ranks of the team as everyone gathered around the trunks of their vehicles and rearmed themselves with the weapons and armor that did not lend themselves to carrying and wearing on the person while riding in a car.

"Yes sir!" "Roger that!" "You better believe it!" Came the assortment of enthusiastic replies from the team members. Kanako's concerns about Keitaro sticking to the mission profile were obviously returning, but she did not wish to say chastise Keitaro in front of the team.

Kanako chose her words carefully. "Don't get too excited, boys and girls," she said, doing her best to sound nonchalant as she tucked her carbine neatly underneath her cloak. "There will be no ass-kicking tonight. The enemy should never know that we're here until we return with the cavalry. Anyone fires a single shot tonight, and it had damn well better be life-or-death, because otherwise it will be more death than life for the one who blows our cover." She made sure that her tone of voice was less threatening than were here words, but was still serious enough to let them know that she meant business. She aimed a subtle glance at Keitaro as she spoke, but he was looking around at the immediately surrounding buildings and streets and did not notice. Only as the trunks of the vehicles slammed shut when everyone was fully equipped did Keitaro speak again.

"Showtime, troops. Let's pair off and get hunting," he said purposefully. When the two originally separate teams had amalgamated and Keitaro and Kanako had assumed command over the entire lot, the two commanders had made sure that their unified team was well organized. This included establishing pre-determined teams of two and three for just such an occasion, so compliance with his order was immediate and orderly. Naturally, it did not make sense for the two commanders to make up their own pair, so Kanako's anxiety clicked up a notch or two as she and her partner went a different way than Keitaro and his.

* * *

The many pairs of scouts did not take much time to disperse. As immortals typically did when operating within cities, the foreign vampires had chosen another warehouse and industrial area for the site of their alleged headquarters because of the minimal human presence there at night. However, this area was rather smaller in terms of square area than was the region they scoured to find the staging area, and as such it did not take nearly as long as it had that time for someone to find what they were looking for.

* * *

Stressing the unity between the Japanese vampire and Lycan communities had been a high priority for both races since the beginning, and as such most of the duos were comprised of one vampire and one Lycan. One such pairing had been stealthily making their way between a line of small sheds that separated rows of larger warehouses when they had inadvertently come within a half-inch and a half-second of being spotted by the very enemy they had been hunting. As they silently began to cross in front of one of the sheds to take cover behind another, with considerable dismay they realized that the side of the shed they had just stepped across was cut out and a pair of foreign vampire sentries were seated inside it, calmly sweeping the 180-degree area ahead of them with thermal binoculars. By sheer chance they had both been looking away from the direction the scouts had came from when they stepped into their field of vision, and only by the sheer speed at which they'd assessed the situation and the fleetness and silence of their hasty retreat had they avoided detection with nay an instant to spare. Not knowing if they were already within eye- or earshot of any other hidden enemy sentries or electronic observation devices, the scouts opted not to send any kind of signal and risk being detected. Instead, they noted their location, and retreated exactly the way they'd came, figuring that if they'd already been seen along that route, being seen to leave couldn't do any further harm. Once they were satisfied that they would be outside the range of any electronic counterintelligence, they immediately got on the radio.

"_Keitaro! Kanako! This is Team 10, come in! We have made contact with the enemy, over!" _

The excited message rang loudly through the earpieces of the named individuals' radio headsets, as well as those of everyone else. Keitaro and Kanako especially felt their stomachs immediately tie into knots, albeit for very different reasons. Keitaro was the first to reply.

"Team 10, what is your location and what is your immediate situation, over?" Keitaro said into his radio as he and his partner stopped walking.

Due to the importance of getting on site as fast as possible, they had not had time to plot out the area into neat little grids as they had on their last reconnaissance mission, and so the scouts of Team 10 had been forced to make note of both their current location and the location of the actual sighting in street names, nearby buildings and other such landmarks. But every team had a GPS device with them that could give directions to a known location and allow them to operate almost as efficiently as if the could have put a grid on the area. 

"_Right now we're at the corner of Kissaki Street and Yuka, and the sighting was in the sixth small shed on the outside from the street coming from our direction! The post was clearly designed to not be visible from the street but to cover the less obvious means past that spot, I think they're being much more careful this time! No enemy made any contact with us and we were not spotted by the sentries we found, but given this level of precaution, we may well have been seen by some other lookout or electronic device and not realized it!"_

Keitaro's lips pursed in frustrated, impatient indecision. After getting their clocks cleaned so ingloriously once before, it only made sense that the enemy would touch up their security practices a bit and although he admittingly hadn't given the matter too much thought before, he was not surprised. One part of what Kanako had said to him had really stuck though, the bit about it being important not to blow their cover before they could acquire the intelligence they needed to plan a full-scale strike. But then again, Team 10 could have already been spotted for all they knew, and if for fear of being seen they didn't pursue the sighting at all, then that was a guaranteed mission failure. Plus, if their reconnaissance efforts were repulsed by a massive force of foreign vampires, that would at least seem to confirm that an enemy stronghold was in the immediate area, and once the perimeter of the enemy-occupied area was established, Rikyo's and Gennai's forces could lay siege to it and dispose of the invaders whenever a good time came up.

Keitaro's mind made short work of his initial indecision. Pulling out his map, he said into his radio, "I think we should regroup at Team 10's location and concentrate our search in the area of the sighting. What say you, Kanako?"

"Agreed," came Kanako's voice through his earpiece.

"Alright. We'll reconvene there and map out a new search pattern."

A round of "Ten-Fours" came from each team.


	37. The Tables Turn

**Author's Notes:**

**Obviously my updating has hit another slow point. As I'm sure any FF.N writer understands how real life has a way of interfering with one's writing projects, if not with direct capture of one's time then by inhibiting one's creative impulsives through various hassles. I've not forgotten about my stories, but this summer has not been the golden opportunity for writing that I had imagined it would be.**

**Also, as I have mentioned for my other story, nowadays certain punctuation and spacing actions produce errors for which there is apparently no means of correction. Very frustrating, as it can really limit one's ability to create proper emphasis. **

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The team did not take long to regroup. Keitaro's energy level spiked even higher at the news of the sighting, and once again his energy spilled over into the other teammates. They split up in groups of four this time, and by the time the various quartets were on their separate ways Kanako was feeling very uneasy. She had Keitaro's word that he would not do anything rash and she knew that Keitaro took promises very seriously, but his emotional stress was painfully obvious and Kanako understood that emotional stress could drive the most soundly reasonable people to commit acts of recklessness. But she had little choice but to carry on with the mission as planned – there was no time to sit down and talk.

Less than half an hour after the groups lost eyesight of one another the second contact was made. Being much more careful this time, the group making the sighting didn't come nearly as close to stumbling right into the enemy sentry station, and several more outposts were discovered in a short order. All these sightings added to the original formed a clear arc protecting a large warehouse complex. As usual, there was little else in the immediate area other than a large helicopter airport that served the facility. Although slipping past the discovered sentry stations would not have been too terribly difficult, Kanako managed to convince the others that they had all the information they needed for the time being, and that they should stand down and observe from a safe distance until Gennai and Rikyo's combined forces were ready and on-site for an immediate attack. Then they could push in deeper to try and gather more detailed intelligence and it wouldn't matter as much if they were discovered, because they could launch a full-scale assault immediately and without allowing the enemy a chance to change anything. Keitaro too accepted Kanako's reasoning, though his reluctance to do so was still apparent. Keitaro and Kanako contacted their respective leaders to catch them up, and the team retreated a block or two's distance away from the outside of the enemy perimeter, set up watches with their binoculars and sighting scopes, and waited.

* * *

"9 hours ... 9 more hours of twiddling our thumbs and watching the enemy bare their backs to us. Did Rikyo and Gennai just get season passes for everyone on the slow boat, or what? This is a waste of time," Keitaro grumbled to himself after he'd been on watch for a short while. Indeed, the most of the enemy troops that appeared in his binoculars were facing away from them, and there was no sign whatsoever that they were on any kind of alert. Even in his agitated state Keitaro had to admit to himself that it was very strange that the main headquarters of the foreign vampires should appear to be so lax in light of their recent defeats, but he saw it as just another sign of their hopeless arrogance and that agitated him even more. 

"I'd rather waste our time than waste our lives. You know that we need reinforcements for this attack. I know it's frustrating, but please, save your hostility for the enemy," Kanako said shortly, instantly realising that she had sounded more irate than she had intended to.

Keitaro turned his head sharply in her direction and made as if to make a smart reply, but thought better of it before doing so.

"Right," was all he said, and turned his head back towards the enemy and affixed his eyes back into his binoculars.

Kanako just barely managed to keep her sigh inwards. These were indeed going to be 9 very long hours.

* * *

However much the time dragged, it passed without incident. When a quartet of their team members arrived to relieve Keitaro, Kanako and their two companions from their watch, Kanako was able to pull Keitaro with her and take him to the small motel where those of the team who were not on watch were passing the time, where she even coaxed him into lying down and trying to get a little rest. All the while nothing of particular interest was observed from the enemy stronghold, and despite his halfway successful effort at resting, by the time the vanguard of the combined Lycan-vampire army began to arrive on the scene, Keitaro was once again barely able to contain his 'enthusiasm.' Even before the entire force had arrived on scene, Keitaro was already back in his armor and issuing his first order to prepare to attack. 

"Hold that order," came Kanako's firm voice from behind him, startling Keitaro equally with its proximity and the frank tones of challenge and anger within. Quickly surprise turned into anger in Keitaro too as he spun to face his partner.

"Please excuse us, ladies and gentlemen, Keitaro and I have a last minute tactical matter to discuss," Kanako said before Keitaro could speak, not breaking her eye contact with Keitaro for an instant.

The small collection of officers that Keitaro had gathered traded glances with one another in puzzlement at the sudden conflict between their two executives who had up until now exhibited not only absolute solidarity but a clear personal friendship as well. Keitaro's facial expression and breathing shot a clear gesture of anger towards Kanako, as did his visible biting of his tongue. His gestures, however, were matched par for par by Kanako's own trademark steely eyes and frosty expression.

"Yes, it would seem that we do," was Keitaro's restrained reply, and without another word, Kanako simply motioned for him to follow, and the two of them walked briskly in silence to the now empty motel room they'd been using.

* * *

"What the _hell_ is your problem, Kanako? A whole day of sitting on your ass not enough for you! Am I really the only one among us who actually wants to fight? No wonder this war seems destined to dra ..." 

Keitaro had begun speaking angrily before Kanako had even closed the door, closing the already short distance between them until his nose was almost touching her hair. But Kanako closed the door before he finished speaking, and as soon as she did so, she whirled on her heels, pushed him back just hard enough to make room for her to bring her hands together in a loud clap just between their faces. Despite Keitaro's anger, it was sufficient to derail his train of thought just enough to allow Kanako to get her words in.

"You want to know what my problem is? Well let me tell you! I have been entrusted by the entire Japanese immortal community to repel an unprovoked attack from the outside, and the one person who is supposed to share my responsibility is having a lot of trouble keeping his priorities straight," Kanako shot back.

"I have done my best to be understanding of your situation, but I'm afraid our mission is _not _simply to avenge Mutsumi and your home through some reckless assault on a fortified enemy stronghold! In case you forgot, our mission for the moment is to analyze the enemy fortifications and determine the best manner of attack, and we have not yet accomplished this! We brought our forces in so that if we fail in our attempt to complete our mission without being noticed, we could attack immediately before the enemy has any more preparation time! Now this is the last time I'm going to ask you before you force me to draw my own conclusions: can you provide leadership based on reason and sound thinking, or are your emotions too much for you to handle at this time? Because if the latter is the answer, you owe it to your people, to my people, to me and to you yourself to step down and fight this war from a position where the rest of us are not bound to the consequences of your actions and the only people you will have to answer to is yourself and the people who care about you!"

Kanako's usually profound ability to lessen Keitaro's negative emotions showed their first signs of failure. While she had halted his angry words, his anger was clearly still present, although Kanako could see the gears working behind his eyes as he digested what she had said.

Of course, Keitaro knew that Kanako was right again. Had this not been the potential eve both of the end of the war and the vengeance of Mutsumi's terrible demise, he would have been better able to center himself at least for the task at hand, but as it was Keitaro was finding it almost impossible to suppress his gut reactions. Still breathing heavily but his internal argument robbing him of words, Kanako spoke again.

"I've said this at least once before, and I'll say it again now. If revenge for your friend is what you want, then you must realize that the only meaningful vengeance is the total defeat of the people who killed her! But that's not going to happen if you won't fight wisely! Now what we have to do right now is get back out there and look for the best way to get inside our enemies' headquarters so we can bring these ugly events to a close for good."

Kanako firmly put her hands on Keitaro's shoulders for emphasis. "So for the sake of all, Keitaro, pull yourself together and let's do what we came to do, and do it right. OK?"

Try as he might, Keitaro could not force down his anger, but on pure knowledge of the truth in Kanako's words he overrode the primal emotions that were boiling over in his heart just to make out a curt, "OK."

However, it quickly became obvious to both of them that the diffusion of tension that Kanako had hoped for was not happening. After a few moments of awkward silence, Keitaro just bowed his head shortly, and then, broodingly, opened the door again and left the room.

Kanako allowed herself an uneasy sigh once Keitaro was gone. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to regain her own center. She was not wearing her full battle dress, but she always carried a few small pouches of time-and-place appropriate items. Opening her eyes again, she slowly reached into one and removed a small, black, elongated oval-shaped case. She stared at the item for a moment, then replaced it into her pouch and purposefully exited the room.

* * *

Fortunately, the last of the reinforcements was not long in coming. Keitaro was making an obvious but not entirely successful both to carry out the business of final planning and preparations for their mission and of avoiding direct contact with Kanako. This did not go unnoticed by the observant young vampire, but there was nothing she could do about it now. Right before a battle was not the time for officers to scwabble, least of all in front of their troops. 

Keitaro, meanwhile, was actually having even more of a hard time than could be readily interpreted from his actions. The long hours of inaction while staring at the enemy he now hated so passionately had worn his nerves and his patience down to nothing. A quiet voice in the back of his head kept reminding him that Kanako's words had been nothing more than the simple truth, but this was drowned out by his own internal dialog that was only just managing to keep him under control for just a little longer. When his and Kanako's group was finally ready to set out again though, Kanako once again took Keitaro's side, and after a quick double-check of their equipment and plans, they broke off into groups of four and melted away into the dark alleyways and streets.

As had been expected, contact with the enemy was quickly established. Though there was no obvious sign that their earlier expedition had been spotted, security was still tight. Not far beyond the previously discovered watch stations, they found elements of a thorough and layered electronic surveillance frontier, as well as a large increase in armed patrol. All the search teams were operating from safe distances and as such, no one reported being seen, and although there was no difference in electronic surveillance or armed protection, an accident of geography and architecture seemed to offer the best point of attack. Two large warehouses were positioned about 25 feet apart at the edge of one side of the enemy perimeter. Though as well protected as any other spot on the perimeter, the large warehouses presented a physical obstacle to quick reinforcement. Only a few doors were on that side of both buildings, and if the electronic frontier could be passed through and the security squads beaten quickly enough, the bulk of their own forces could be through before enemy reinforcements could contain them.

* * *

"If we send in small teams to temporarily take the warehouses, or at least create enough mayhem inside to prevent the enemy from swarming through them to swamp us at either end, then we should have a solid foothold before they can scramble the bulk of their troops. Place snipers all around the rest of the perimeter to pick off any foreign vampires attempting to sneak out the back, and we'll force any enemy forces we find into battle. We can end this war tonight," Keitaro said, speaking both to the officers of Gennai and Rikyo's soldiers and to Gennai and Rikyo themselves over a makeshift video conference. 

Nods from the other officers were passed around the group, and Rikyo and Gennai both gave a slow nod of approval as well.

"Kanako, what are your thoughts on the matter?" Asked Gennai.

"I have to agree with Keitaro. I don't think this will be another easy victory, but I can't imagine we're going to get any better opportunity than this."

The two immortal leaders exchanged a glance with one another over the camera, then looked back at the waiting soldiers.

"Alright, your plan has our stamp of approval. We look forward to your success," said Gennai again, and then he and his Lycan counterpart blipped off their respective computer screens.

Keitaro and Kanako first looked to each other, and then to their other officers.

"Alright troopers, let's do this one more time. Is everyone clear on exactly what their task is to be?" Said Keitaro, addressing Eizo and the other officers.

"Yes sir," was the unanimous reply.

"Good. Then let's do it," Keitaro said.

As the rest of the officers began to file out of the motel room, Kanako purposefully cut off Keitaro's exit. She let him give her a slightly irate inquisitive look before speaking.

"I'm going with your group," she stated matter-of-factly. Keitaro's expression began to show more irritation, but Kanako spoke again before he could say anything.

"It's not open for discussion."

Keitaro took a deep breath and made a minimally successful attempt at concealing his rising anger, but said nothing and merely nodded slightly. Kanako returned the nod, adjusted the strap of her carbine slightly, and motioned for Keitaro to lead the way. Together they left the room in silence, their other officers having all gone ahead.

* * *

Had Keitaro been more of himself, he would have realized that not once before in his life had he experienced anything even resembling the bloodlust that drove him now. Even Mutsumi's death had not directly affected him in this way – at first he had been consumed by grief, which had then turned into primal, unfocused rage, which in turn had become a cold, calculating drive for revenge. Now that his revenge was at hand, particularly after the agonizingly long wait, it was costing Keitaro a great deal of conscious energy simply to remain in human form. His knowledge of his greater responsibilities were fighting a losing battle in his head against his most primitive and deep-down Lycan instinct – to kill. This instinct had little concept of identities – pretty much anything in front of it was an enemy. Again, had a more typical state of mind been anywhere in his consciousness, he would have been worried about his ability to distinguish the invading foreign vampires from the Japanese vampires who fought by his side in the state he was in. But as it was, while for the moment at least he had no particular specific desire to slay his nearest vampiric ally, the concern of friendly fire was nowhere in his head. It was only some unknown autopilot mode that allowed him to pass within a half-second's leap from his enemy without acting out. 

Fortunately, Kanako was much more mission-oriented. She could sense the state of Keitaro, but knew that there was nothing more she could do but hope that his self-control could hold out until the time was right. Keitaro, herself, their two companions and the rest of their personal team had penetrated the outer rings of the electronic surveillance frontier with still no obvious sign that they had been noticed. Even Kanako had doubted that they'd make it this far without starting a fight, but she had not let the chance go to waste and neither had the other groups of scouts. Over their secure, low probability of intercept radios, they had poured observations of enemy defenses to their forces waiting just outside the designated strike point. Now Kanako's group had neared the small, single story office building that at first glance appeared to be the enemy headquarters, and were silently watching and listening for any clues regarding special defenses – beyond the few dozen heavily armed guards that they could immediately see, of course. When after changing angles several times the found nothing new, Kanako finally made the decision that Keitaro had been waiting for.

"_Not going to get any better than this ... let's order our main body to attack," _Kanako whispered quietly in his ear.

Keitaro's only response was a simply release of breath that nevertheless managed to sound menacing, and his eyes began to cloud over grey.

"_Please Keitaro, wait for our forces create some chaos. There are too many of them for just the four of us to openly attack, and who knows what's on the inside." _Kanako whispered again. She was sure that Keitaro had heard her, but his energies were beginning to spiral out of control. He could not wait any longer. Quickly, Kanako depressed the signal key on her radio to send the Morse code signal to begin the attack.

The excitement of the decisive battle to come was already running high among the troops when Kanako's order beeped quietly through their radios. Eizo, who had been placed in command of the lot, could not suppress his smile as he spoke to the entire army.

"This is it, boys and girls," he said smoothly. "This will be one for the history books."

Soaking up the indomitable spirit of his troops for a moment, he then slowly turned around and raised his suppressed sniper rifle in the direction of one of the guards protecting the point of entry. All around him dozens of his teammates were doing the same. As soon as he was satisfied of his aim, he gently squeezed his trigger.

The guards around the warehouses fell to the ground in near unison, their heads in pieces all around them from the high-explosive dum-dum rounds. There we no living guards left outside but Eizo had to assume that either someone in one of the warehouses or another unseen enemy had witnessed the attack, and scarcely had the last guard hit the ground than he was leading his troops forward in a rush attack towards the gap between the two warehouses. As he had predicted, even as they reached the gap, enemy troops began to spill out of the doors inside the alleyway, but as there were only a few doors, their numbers were totally insufficient to stop the swarm of Japanese immortals that flew towards them, their guns blazing. But they did manage to at least slow down the advance.

At the same time, the two small assault groups that Eizo had assigned to run amok within the warehouses had just blasted through the front doors, intent on doing an instant replay on their last attack on an enemy-infested warehouse. However, it was quickly made clear to the attackers that things would be different this time.

Far from the sparsely occupied buildings that they had been anticipated to be, the small Japanese squads were confronted with nearly 100 foreign vampires, all heavily armed and armored. Worse, at short, regular intervals along the walls facing the alleyway, there were large boxes that were easily recognizable as bombs. They were bolted to the concrete floor of the warehouse and the inward side was reinforced with a heavy metal plate. Their purpose was obvious, but barely had the first attacker raised his carbine to fire it was too late to stop it.

"Looks like we're going a hair early, maggots. Deliver the package now," said one of the foreign vampires into a walkie-talkie, and a subordinate standing next to him pulled out a small remote control from a pouch in his armored vest, flipped up a safety latch, and pressed a small red buttom.

By this time, more than half of the Japanese immortals were inside the alleyway. The rows of powerful shaped-charge explosives lining the wall of both warehouses detonated in a rapid sequence, sending an intense, focused blast of energy and silver shrapnel through the attackers like a wave of water through a sand castle. The majority of those caught directly within the blast area were blown apart, burned alive or riddled with shrapnel instantly. Even before the flames had parted to leave a clear view of the destruction, the scores of vampires behind the bombs were unleashing a storm of gunfire on the shocked survivors.

Keitaro and Kanako's group were rattled by the massive explosion, and even before the frantic radio traffic from their officers reached their ears Kanako knew that something had gone very wrong. The rancor from gunfire and screams drowned out many of the words that came through her ear piece, but she could make out enough to figure out what had happened.

"_... attacked ... Trap! ... enemy ... pinned down ... retreat!" _Were the words that Kanako was able to understand. But the fact that the massive explosion was not part of their game plan was enough for her to fill in the gaps. Turning towards where Keitaro had been at her side to suggest that they fall back and regroup, she was startled to find that he was no longer there. Very quickly her thoughts routed Keitaro's most likely action, and as a knot of apprehension lanced through her stomach she turned her eyes towards the enemy headquarters just as the first roars, screams, and gunshots radiated out from it.

At the first rumbling explosion, Keitaro had taken advantage of the noise to cover his own movement. Calling upon all his immortal powers for speed and stealth, he had whisked himself down to the level of the headquarters building and had used the cover of the subsequent blasts to behead the few guards protecting the small enclosed area to one side of the building with swift and savage strokes of the short sword he carried. Apparently then his bloodlust had overwhelmed him, as the roars suggested that he had shifted forms and attacked the occupants of the building with tooth and claw. But the gunfire and the growing number of screams, shouts and commands from within suggested that even an enraged Lycan was hopelessly outnumbered.

Ripping off one of two strips of grenades off her vest, she tossed them to one of her companions with the simple command of "cover me." Jumping up and advancing quickly in a zig-zag pattern while picking off visible targets with her own carbine, Kanako flew forward, and even as she felt the first armor-piercing incendiary round just manage to pierce her armor she leaped forward and through a window feet-first, quickly unloading the rest of her clip as she did so and landing in a crouch. Ignoring the small but searing spot of pain where the bullet burned her, she quickly made out Keitaro's form tearing through a mob of enemy vampires like rag dolls. His special armor seemed to be doing it's job, as the same armor-piercing rounds that had wounded her ricocheted off his protective wear with no obvious ill effects. Nevertheless, his head was completely unprotected, and it was only the speed at which it flashed from enemy to enemy that had prevented him from being hit. Only a few of the vampires on the inside even noticed her against the chaos being created by Keitaro, but the sole survivor of the outside guard ran to the broken window where Kanako had broken in and fired at her again, and Kanako gasped as several more fiery projectiles bored their way through the back plates of her armor, not far enough to be lethal but plenty far enough to be painful. Falling forward with the energy of the strikes, she drew her pistol as she rolled forward to dispatch her tormentor while at the same time just avoiding another burst of gunfire from the foreign vampires on the inside. The outside vampire no longer a threat, she rolled to the side and took cover behind a corner as she quickly reloaded her carbine. However, those vampires who had decided that she represented as much a threat as Keitaro had moved on her, and she had to kick an enemy shotgun away from her before she could bring her own weapon to bear. Switching to melee mode, she slung her firearm and drew her naginata with a practiced efficiency. Extending the weapon to its full length in the same motion, she knocked the guns out of the hands of two more attackers, then brought the blade around to cleave them in two before they could produce another weapon. She split the chest of a final assailant with her blade, but not before he'd managed to put several more rounds into Kanako's midsection. At point-blank range these rounds penetrated deeper into her flesh than had any of the others, and it was fortunate that she had killed the last of the enemy who were paying her any heed, as she too fell gasping to the ground for a moment. But her meticulous training paid off, and she automatically retrieved an extraction tool from her kit. Rolling back behind the corner for a moment, she grabbed a piece of wood from the smashed window frame and stuck it in her mouth, biting down hard on it as she stabbed the extractor into the holes in her armor, pulling out three of the smoking bullets in quick succession. At another sound from outside the window, she raised her head just in time to see her other two companions raise the barrels of their carbines and open fire into the chaotic mess of foreign vampires across the room. Calling upon all her healing energy, she pulled herself back to her feet and motioned for her companions to move in, and spun back around the corner to lead them.

Despite being outnumbered a good 40 to one, Keitaro was making quite a show of himself. The fact that vampires with melee weapons were crawling all over and around him prevented their gun-armed friends from getting a clean shot as they fought to get control over him. Keitaro was fending them off astoundingly well considering, but the fact that he was clearly on the defensive now meant that he would not likely last much longer in the spot he was in. Even under the circumstances Kanako could not help but to make a mental note to inquire to Keitaro about getting herself a set of that armor at the earliest possible time. Just as more of the enemy vampires were switching their attention to Kanako and her wingmen, she and one companion pulled the pins from the strips of grenades without even detaching them from the cloth and flung them over Keitaro and behind him. Kanako had set them with a short fuse, and so the bombs exploded less than a second after hitting the ground. The mass of foreign vampires shielded Keitaro from most of the blast, but it still knocked him down and sent him sprawling. Cover fire from Kanako's companions shot down the survivors of the enemy vampires.

Kanako ran forward and grabbed onto the shoulder plates of Keitaro's armor, and her two companions opened fire again at the enemy with their carbines.

"_Damn you, Keitaro! You promised me that you wou ..." _Kanako hissed angrily, but was cut short when Keitaro lashed out at her in an attempt to dislodge her. Kanako's fast reactions avoided most of the blow and the armor on her own arms shielded her from his claws, but as Keitaro quickly drew back onto his feet and aimed himself back at the enemy reinforcements struggling to get through the door that was now blocked and jammed with debris, Kanako found herself having to make a very conscious effort to keep her own temper in check. As if forgetting about Kanako entirely, Keitaro snarled and prepared to leap into an attack. Kanako's eyes gleamed icy blue as she ripped the black oval case from her pouch and crushed it in her hand to reveal a syringe tipped with a thick needle. Launching herself into Keitaro, she knocked him off balance and disrupted his jump. Wrapping her left arm around the top of his head, she stabbed the needle into his neck and squeezed the contents into his bloodstream.

The effect was immediate and dramatic. Although Keitaro managed to violently throw Kanako off his back, even before she hit the ground Keitaro's muscles seemed to cease to respond to his will. Within a few seconds he began to stumble and fell back to the ground, and his body began to contort as he began to shift back into human form. Her eyes still shining blue and her face contorted with anger, Kanako had quickly picked herself up , grabbed Keitaro's writhing figure and heave it up onto her back as the first enemy reinforcements managed to get through the obstacle. Kanako's wingmen shot at them, but as they would soon again be badly outnumbered, all they could do was flee and hope that their comrades elsewhere were still creating enough havoc to allow them to escape. Running as fast as she could with the added weight of Keitaro, Kanako again felt the searing burn of more incendiary rounds in her back and her companions returned fire. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she pushed herself onward even harder.


	38. Afterwards

**Author's Notes:**

**With the two year anniversary of the beginning of this fic just a couple of days away, I am sorry to say that I am still only about 2/3, maybe ¾ of the way through the story I have in mind. I gave up a long time ago trying to predict just when this story would be completed, but for a long time my only remaining time goal was "under two years." So much for that **

**I am also unable to predict an increase in update time. Darn ol' Real Life just won't leave me to my writing.**

**

* * *

**

When Keitaro finally regained some semblance of consciousness, he had the faint recognition of being in the room that he and Kanako had been sharing at Gennai's headquarters building. But it was more of a subconscious recognition than anything else. Every muscle in his body ached and he felt as though he couldn't so much as twitch a finger if his very life depended on it. His head throbbed, his sensed were dull, his thoughts were incoherent, and even his anger was simply flatlined by the complete absence of energy in his body. He didn't so much know that he was alone as he simply could not have perceived the presence of another even had anyone else been around. His perception of time was also not functioning, and he hadn't the faintest idea how many hours he lay inert on the bed, but by the time Kanako returned to the room, he had recovered just enough to be able communicate.

"Glad you're awake," Kanako said shortly when she noticed his vacant eyes had affixed themselves to her. "It seems that I overestimated the dosage, I was getting a little worried."

Kanako's concern was readably sincere despite the curt tone of her words. Keitaro's memory was trying hard to remind him what had happened, but for the moment he was only getting bits and pieces.

"Wha happen to me ..." Keitaro mumbled groggily.

Kanako's eyes squinted disbelievingly. "You really don't remember?"

Keitaro's face went limp with thought for a minute, and then he spoke.

"I 'member ... enemy base ... we waiting for right moment ..." and then his words trailed off as his memories ran dry.

Kanako let out a frustrated sigh, and then took a deep, slow breath before answering.

"Well you're right. That's what happened. Only the right moment never came," she said. "The enemy knew we were coming. They must have sighted us during our first mission after all. They deliberately left what appeared to be a weak spot in their defense perimeter but the whole thing was a trap. Over one third of our force was lost. If our people hadn't put up as much of a fight as they had, you and I wouldn't have escaped either."

Kanako waited for a moment too see what Keitaro's reaction would be, but he hadn't recovered enough yet to really be able to comprehend something so macro in scale. Kanako knelt down next to his bed and went on with her refreshing of his memory.

"You don't remember anything about what happened to you?" She asked.

Keitaro thought for a minute again and then weakly shook his head.

Kanako's face turned even more stern. "You went berserk. You attacked the enemy command post alone and you forced me to take extreme measures to get you out. You feel the way you do because I injected you with a massive dose of tranquilizers with a small amount of silver nitrate to ensure the effect. But I must have put too much silver nitrate into the mix. Your breathing slowed down dangerously at one point and your heartbeat became irregular. You spent an hour or two in the infirmary before I could bring you up here."

All this news was too much for Keitaro's foggy mind, and his confused facial expression told Kanako that this wasn't the time to talk.

"You and I have got a lot of leveling to do, but it will wait until you have fully recovered. Eizo has assumed command of the Lycan forces for the time being and Gennai and Rikyo are going to need some answers," Kanako said, as she slowly stood up and turned towards the door. "Rest up. You'll need it," was her parting shot, and after picking up the bag with her laptop in in, she quietly left the room, leaving Keitaro's already muddied brain swirling with bad news that he couldn't even come close to processing in the state he was in.

* * *

Meanwhile, surreal glum was also the feeling at the residences of Haruka Urashima and Seta Noriyasu, and the aura there had not yet been broken since the younger girls were made homeless. Courtesy of her relationship with an ER doctor, Kitsune was extremely well practiced in offering consolation to people who'd just lost a loved one, but now that the deceased was one of her own dear friends, with another dear friend rendered nearly non-functional with guilt, she was finding her skills hard-pressed to keep herself well composed, let alone to bring any cheer to anyone else. Koan gave her great strength, but he still had his obligations to his hospital and simply could not be there nearly as often as either of them would have liked. Kitsune felt a responsibility to keep her spirits high, at least in front of her friends, in times of crisis - if the famous consoler herself needed consoling, she felt, it would have a very sad effect indeed among those who looked to her for comfort. And her best friend more than anyone needed comfort now more than ever. Naru was barely taking care of her most basic needs. Ever since that awful night about all Naru would do of her own intuition was lie silently in her temporary room at Seta's apartment. Someone would have to pressure her for a good 20 minutes or more to get her to eat a small portion of food, and Kitsune was beginning to try to figure out a way to get Naru to go with her for a short walk. Or perhaps take a shower. Or anything to show some sign of life. Though she had not said so, nor said much of anything for that matter, it was quite clear to Kitsune that Naru suffered from much more than simple grief - she blamed herself for everything that had happened. Far more than the destruction of their home, it was of course Mutsumi's death that was the hardest for everyone to bear, and that in of itself was more a tragic twist of fate. While Kitsune had to acknowledge that Naru's recklessness had to be considered partially responsible for the burning of the Hinata Apartments, Keitaro had successfully warned them of the danger and they all should have escaped harm. The circumstances that brought Mutsumi back into the fire were beyond Naru's influence. Not that this analysis was likely to be of any comfort to Naru, and Kitsune resolved not to even hint at the matter in Naru's presence.

Knocking softly on the door to Seta's office room that was serving as Naru's room for the time being, Kitsune said, "Naru? Are you awake?"

There was no answer, but Kitsune heard the faint sounds of Naru stirring.

"Naru, I'm coming in," Kitsune said after a minute, and she gently opened the door.

Although she had been provided with a proper bedroll, Naru had quickly taken to sleeping on the floor in a corner of the room with only a light blanket, not even a pillow. Despite the marginally successful efforts by her friends to keep her fed and hydrated, her color was already noticeably fainter and sicklier than normal, and the hollow, spiritless expression on her face still poked at Kitsune's heart no matter how used to seeing it she had gotten over the past few days. Naru didn't say anything but slowly raised her head to look at Kitsune.

"Naru, I really think some fresh air would do you good. Will you please come outside with me and sit out on the porch? It's a really nice evening," Kitsune asked.

Naru just continued to stare at Kitsune and gave no outgoing sign of acknowledgment of Kitsune's words. Kitsune decided that Naru's lack of objection was enough of an agreement for her. Purposefully she walked over to Naru and gently lifted her to her feet.

"Come on. It will help, I promise," Kitsune said, and putting her arm around Naru she nudged her towards the door. Naru still said nothing but gave a slight nod of consent as they started walking.

Neither of them said anything for a while after they sat down on the bench. Much to Kitsune's surprise, it was Naru who spoke first.

"Thank you, Kitsune," she said quietly. Kitsune almost jumped at her words, both because she had gotten used to the silence and it was the first time Naru had spoken in almost 24 hours.

Not really knowing exactly what she was being thanked for, Kitsune simply replied, "you're welcome."

Naru was silent again for a few minutes, and then spoke again. "I'm really thirsty. Let's get something to drink," she said in the same soft voice she had used before.

Kitsune nodded. "Sure. Let's go."

Slowly and purposefully the two of them stood up, Kitsune gently giving Naru an extra boost to her feet. Neither said anything more until each of them had drank down half a tall glass of the nutrient-rich juice smoothie that Seta had always enjoyed. Since Naru was even more reluctant to eat than to drink, this mixture was probably the better part of what kept her body functioning.

"Why do you care so much, Kitsune?" Naru asked, the bluntness of her question startling Kitsune even more so as matched with her quiet, soft tone of voice. "You really shouldn't, you know. None of you should."

As unexpected as Naru's words were, Kitsune could immediately see where this was going, and she didn't like it.

"If it wasn't for my selfish insecurities, we wouldn't be sitting here right now. We'd probably be relaxing in the hot springs ... and Mutsumi would be sitting right there with us."

Kitsune could guess what had been going on inside Naru's head for the past few days, but she wasn't about to let Naru take this plunge. She wasn't sure about how she would stop her, but Kitsune was determined to try.

"Listen carefully, Naru, because I'm going to tell you the honest to goodness truth. Yes, you acted recklessly when you went after Keitaro. No, you did not think about the possible consequences of your actions. But then, neither did Keitaro, or any of the rest of us. Perhaps Keitaro should not have let you go after you showed up at his doorstep. Or at least assisted you in getting home to ensure that these 'foreign vampires' didn't follow you. Then again, he told us all about what was going on. I'm surprised the thought never occurred to any of us either, not even tactically-minded Haruka or Seta. We could have packed up and left for higher ground a long time ago, all together. Hell, in that case, maybe the bad guys wouldn't have even felt the need to burn down an abandoned inn. Even all things being as they were, Keitaro warned us of the danger in time for us to get away. It was only because of a freak accident of circumstances that Mutsumi ended up where she did, and that is _nobody's_ fault. Any of us could have left a note or something in case she did come back, but there was no reason to suspect that she would, and under the heat of the moment, it never occurred to anyone. So you see, maybe you have a higher share of the blame for the burning of the Hinata Apartments than anyone else, but we all have a _piece_ of the blame for that, and _none_ of us can take responsibility for Mutsumi's death. Not you, not Keitaro, not Mutsumi herself. No one. Understand?"

The expression that formed on Naru's face as Kitsune spoke answered well enough that Naru did indeed understand what was being told to her, but it also that both her conscious and subconscious minds were not in full agreement with it, or at the very least were not capable of accepting it at this time. Nevertheless, Kitsune had stopped Naru from taking the nose dive she had been preparing to take. A bit of awkward silence passed as each of them took another drink of juice. Naru's face was still devoid of emotion. Even though she had been sleeping – or at least pretending to sleep – for a good 19 or 20 hours each day since she got to Seta's place, Naru looked like someone who hadn't slept in weeks.

Kitsune put her hand over Naru's and looked her friend straight in the eyes. "It's hard for us all to have lost a dear friend. But with you down at the bottom of the dumps like this it's almost like we've lost _two_ friends. I know how your mind works and I can only imagine that this is extra hard for you, but please let us help you. We want you back. We _need _you back. We all need to pull together to get through this. Are you hearing me?"

Kitsune wasn't expecting any kind of coherent response, and so she was pleasantly surprised when Naru, after a few moments of silence, offered her the faintest of nods in return. Kitsune had no ready response to Naru's unexpected reply, and not wanting to let the moment slide downwards any, she simply squeezed Naru's hand in support. Refilling both of their juice glasses, she motioned to Naru that they should go back outside.

* * *

While Kitsune was working on Naru, Haruka and Seta had been busying themselves looking for a better place to shelter their charges than spare bedrooms and couches. They had met early in the evening at a nearby internet cafe, sipping coffee as they poured over page after page of 'For Rent' adds. A house or small condo complex for rent was what they were looking for, as they did not want to make the search for a new home a rushed affair, and the pair were still trying to figure out how best to prevent a repeat of history. They had no way of knowing if the foreign vampires had either of their names or personal information or if the persecution of Keitaro's human friends was something that the enemy intended to pursue further, but it was dawning on them that it might not be safe to stay at their known residences for much longer. If their enemy had information on Keitaro – and they had obviously at least learned of his old human residence – it wouldn't take them much additional effort to find out about Haruka, and through her Seta, and through the both of them, the rest of the girls. Rented residences could be quickly and easily changed if security issues warranted, and could provide more comfortable accommodations for everyone than the current arrangements anyway. A duplex house being offered for rent about 30 miles from Hinata looked like the first choice among what they had found, and they planned to take everyone there in the morning to see what they thought. It was certainly a lot smaller than the Hinata Apartments had been and lacked the luxury of a natural hot spring, but at least everyone would have their own room again.

"How are your roommates doing?" Asked Seta after the brief moment of silence that had followed their agreement on the duplex house.

Haruka made a slight sigh and took another small sip of her coffee. "Motoko is ... well, being Motoko. Has spent a lot of time meditating and training. Doesn't really like to talk. Not even especially responsive to Suu's provocations, not that Suu is being especially provocative. She's hoarded pretty much every potential electronic and mechanical component out of my pad that I didn't smack her upside the head for touching and disappeared with them into the attic. My guess is she's designing some sort of weapon to fight vampires so that she's never driven from her home again. Whatever helps her cope, right?"

Haruka finished the meager remains of her coffee before finishing. "I have to say though, for someone who used to be so delicate, Shinobu has held out well. She immediately resumed her usual routine of cooking and cleaning. I was about to tell her to at least let me handle the cleaning in my own house, but I supposed that this is just her own coping mechanism and decided to leave her be. She tries to be reasonably cheerful in front of the others and I think she does indeed help them, but unless I'm hearing Motoko or Suu I'd say she's cried herself to sleep every night since."

Seta nodded. Pausing for another moment, he added, "And you?"

It had been over a year since Seta had finally gotten Haruka to quit smoking, and without her old distraction from awkward moments, to this day she still had a tendency to get fidgety. She was still holding her empty coffee cup and she began tapping in on her leg.

"I've seen all the same things that you've seen. Some of them were a lot worse than this," she replied frankly. A moment of that awkward silence passed in which Seta projected an aura of mild disappointment at Haruka that said, _"don't go back to this now." _Reading that from him, she let out a half-chuckle of defeat and spoke again.

"I hate the fact that we just got our clocks cleaned by an enemy against which we have little to no ability to fight back. Dammit Seta, even at the worst of times in the old days, outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and outgunned, we could still _fight._ We could be sure that if we died, the enemy wouldn't be _laughing_ when they were telling their friends about the fight later. Most people would say it's idiotic to fight when you know that you can't possibly win, but I have to admit, even knowing the only possible outcome, it was no small part of me that wanted to stay behind, draw a line in the dirt in front of the Hinata Apartments, and dare the first vampire on the scene to step across it. But now we have a responsibility to help look after the girls. Even if there was something we might have done, our lives are no longer entirely our own to throw away. The only rational thing we can do is run and hide and wait for someone else to fix this problem for us. This is helplessness of the worst kind. I can't stand it."

Seta had more or less expected this response, and as such he already had the gist of his rebuttal on the tip of his tongue.

"The line between courage and foolishness is a very thin one. To sacrifice one's self in a battle against a vastly superior enemy when it is escape is possible usually sounds like the latter to me," he said softly. "This is not helplessness at all. It's not like we've never done the duck-and-cover drill before and skipped the whole fighting retreat thing. Successful evasion and escape are every bit as indicative of victory when faced with overwhelming odds as is smashing your enemy to smithereens in less unfavorable circumstances."

Haruka sighed again and cracked a small, forced smile. "Nothing adds insult to injury like getting a pep talk in maturity from the likes of you," she said. "Now all that needs to happen is a piece of this ceiling to fall down on my head and snap my spine so that I can face the rest of this ordeal from a wheelchair."

Seta smiled a little more sincerely than Haruka, and pushing his own mostly empty coffee cup towards the center of the table, he slowly stood up. "Well let's call it a night then, honey. We should probably say goodnight to the kids before they all fall asleep anyway."

His ability to retain a sense of humor in hard times wasn't always something that Haruka had appreciated in the past, but for now it did make her smile more genuine as the two of them bid their own goodnights and left for their respective homes.

* * *

It had been in the wee hours of the morning following the disastrous attack on the foreign vampire headquarters that Keitaro had first begun to recover from the effects of Kanako's drug. Even before Kanako herself had managed to get away for some well-earned sleep that morning, Keitaro had drifted off again, and it was not until shortly after Haruka and Seta had left the café late that night that he woke up. Although he was still a bit groggy, he now felt more or less back to normal – physically at least. Slowly sat up in his bed, shook his head a few times, and looked around. His head was clearing and was quickly trying to reassociate his memories with the immediate situation. Kanako was not in the room.

After a few minutes Keitaro got out of bed. He had on only a pair of boxer shorts, and so he meandered over to his side of the small shared dresser. Pulling out the top drawer, he found a short note.

"_Keitaro -_

_As soon as you are up and able, please come and find me._

_Kanako"_

A feeling in the back of Keitaro's head was telling him that he should be angry, and at the same time another feeling was having him feel almost apologetic. But the conflicting thoughts were quickly producing a splitting headache. He finished getting dressed, but then just sat down in the chair and tried to finish sorting things out. The more he thought about it the more he was remembering about what had happened and what he had done the previous night. But although his recollection was linear and easy to follow, it didn't really seem like a memory of what 'he' had done. More like memories of something he had watched though the eyes of the one doing the things he had done. In fact, it was very similar to his flashes of the memories of his predecessor, Katsumoto, the main difference being that despite the third-person form his current memories were taking, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that these were his own memories and not those of another. Why he saw them this way he did not know, and for reasons he could not have identified, it troubled him deeply. All the while he was thinking about it though, he was very aware of the fact that his headache was getting worse. He sat there for several hours tormenting himself before Kanako returned.

Keitaro was sitting so quietly that it took Kanako a minute or two to notice that he was up. She sat down on the corner of her own bed and that's when she saw that Keitaro's bed was empty.

"Are you feeling better?" She asked.

Still unsure of his own emotional state, Kanako's words nevertheless snapped him out of the trance he was in, and his reply was a bland, "Yeah."

There were a few minutes of awkward silence, after which Kanako slowly stood up and approached Keitaro. He stood up too and pushed the chair back slightly, but did not move otherwise. As she got closer, her face bore an expression of exhaustion, and something akin to sadness was apparent too.

"Do you remember everything now?" She asked.

Keitaro did indeed have a more or less complete recollection of the previous night, although he could still not get his emotional bearings on it.

"Yes," was his equally bland response.

"Good," Kanako said, as she stopped walking a pace in front of him. She stared into his eyes for maybe 20 seconds or so, her expression hardening, and neither of them said a word. Then a single tear ran down her right cheek, and before Keitaro could take that in she slapped him across the face hard enough to make him stumble to that side.

Kanako had taken Keitaro completely by surprise, and his reflexive reaction was anger. Eyes wide, he steadied himself and locked his gaze back into Kanako's. But she was a master of keeping the initiative in personal affairs like this, and she denied him his response.

"_That _was for breaking your promise and for trying to kill yourself right in front of me," she hissed, her voice strained by a mixture of anger and hurt. "I will _never_ forgive you if you waste your life so foolishly, and if you ever attempt such a thing again, so help me Keitaro I will personally lock you up until this war is over. You reading me loud and clear?"

Keitaro's emotions had been jump-started from zero to shock to anger and now to a combination of both with the added sense of anxiety that one is hit with when two radically different lines of thought are each vying for control of one's actions and the end result is paralysis. The paralysis was short lived, though. Kanako seemed to be struggling for words and completely failing to come up with any, and just stared into Keitaro's eyes with her own, both of which now had thin tear streaks leaking from them. With his already conflicting thoughts, his re-stimulated anger and now the agonizing silent stare-down, the discomfort of the situation overcame Keitaro's indecision. With an aura that was both purposeful and forceful and yet at the same time strangely empty and weak, he silently turned his head away from Kanako, brushed past her and went out the door, pulling the door behind him with just enough strength to see it shut behind him with a soft click.

Kanako stood where she was for another minute or two, and then slowly meandered over to the chair that Keitaro had been sitting in and plunked down in it. Propping her elbows on the small table and interlacing her fingers, she dropped her forehead down against her clenched hands and closed her eyes, squeezing out a last pair of tears as she did so.


	39. The Gears Keep Turning

Keitaro, acting on autopilot, had made a roundabout way down to the control center. Gennai was not there, but the usual staff was present, as was Eizo and the acting second officer of the Lycan detachment.

Eizo smiled thinly. "Welcome back, Keitaro," he said. "Your timing is good too. A few hours to spare."

"What do you mean?" Keitaro asked, trying with very limited success to stick the present unpleasantries of his personal life on the back burner inside his head.

"Didn't Kanako find you? She was supposed to tell you. Command of this war is being moved to the island. While it is a less convenient location and response time to any developments on the mainland will suffer accordingly, in light of our severely depleted manpower it has been decided that our own headquarters is more defensible by fewer troops. All secondary and tertiary outposts are being abandoned as well, to add some small numbers back into our striking power."

Keitaro nodded, and Eizo continued.

"We are sending people out in batches so as not to draw undue attention. I was just about to leave myself to help with the reestablishment," he said, motioning to his acting second. "Rikyo wishes to speak with you privately before returning you to command, so if you can be ready to leave within half an hour or so we can head out together."

"I can be ready to leave in about 15 minutes," Keitaro replied quickly.

Eizo nodded. "Very well then. I'll be right here, just come and grab me when you're ready."

Keitaro just nodded, spun on his heels and walked right back out of the control center.

* * *

It was not until Keitaro was a few floors away from the control center that the thought occurred to him that Kanako would probably still be in their quarters, as he could not have been gone for more than 20 or 25 minutes at the most. Any success met by his brief effort to get himself together in the control center was fast being voided as the notion of confronting Kanako filled his head. Even now he could admit to himself that Kanako had every right to be angry with him, but he was in no state of mind for conflict with anyone that he did not consider an enemy. If Kanako was still in a confrontational mood, even though Keitaro knew that she was more in the right than not, his self control was not at optimum levels and it was very likely that something would happen that both of them would regret later. All he needed from their quarters was his armor, all his other gear was easily replaceable back at the island, so he made his mind to force his way in and out as fast as possible.

Kanako was rather startled when the door opened again and Keitaro walked quickly over to his bed. His duffel bag was on the floor next to it, and without even looking in Kanako's direction he zipped the bag up and hefted it up onto his shoulder. Kanako was still sitting at the table but now she had her computer out and was entering into Gennai's inventory all the equipment that was being moved to the Lycan island. As Keitaro made to leave again, Kanako quickly stood up and moved towards him.

"Keitaro, wait a minute," she said, as she hustled over to catch him.

As she came within a few paces of him, Keitaro took a deep, strained breath, and turning to face sideways of Kanako he held his hand up in front of his chest in a gesture of 'Stop.'

"I beg you, Kanako, leave it alone," he said, restraint so thick in his voice as to slur his speech. "I can't handle anything else right now. I really can't."

His tone of voice left Kanako with no doubts as to the truthfulness of his words. Her initial anger and emotional strength had largely been expended in her first confrontation with Keitaro, and as the reality of their larger situation had quickly returned to the forefront of her thoughts she too would now rather avoid friendly fire. She made a conscious effort to lighten her demeanor as she took a step backwards and nodded softly in concession. Keitaro managed a slight nod in return – though still without looking at her - and turned back around and left the room again.

* * *

Eizo was anxious to get back to the island himself, and so it didn't cost Keitaro much persuading to prompt the other Lycan officers to leave immediately. On the trip back, Keitaro once again did his best to focus himself on the matter of war, and he was fast brought up to speed on the current state of affairs by Eizo.

As was almost always the case, things were not entirely as they had first appeared. While their own devastating losses were confirmed and undeniable, in the frantic hours after the battle while Keitaro had been recovering from Kanako's drug, mass debriefings of the troops had taken place, and through cross-checking the similar accounts it was strongly suggested that even in the dire circumstances of the moment they had managed to inflict significant casualties on the enemy as well. Combined with the losses of the first major battle at the staging area, the complete lack of any sign that the foreign vampires intended to exploit this victory with a follow-up action supported the notion that, at the very least, a major offensive was beyond them. Equally promisingly, it came to be known that one small group of survivors seeking to break out of the cauldron of foreign vampire firepower had sought their escape through what turned out to be another large weapons and munitions dump. Though said 'survivors' were quickly overwhelmed, someone managed to touch off some of the explosives and ammunition before it was over and the ensuing chain reactions completed the annihilation of both parties on the inside and sent another depot of valuable war material into the atmosphere, leading to the speculation that unless their invasion purse was rich indeed, their armories must be getting a bit bare on the shelves.

However, from there, there were two distinct possibilities; either the invading vampires had been spent as a fighting force and would be withdrawn to from where ever they had come, or they were expecting reinforcements and merely had to hold the line until they arrived. Either way, Eizo said, he believed it was to critical to strike again, hard and fast, before they enemy got the idea that they'd regained the initiative, or before they could assemble an overwhelming force, and this was the course of action that had been agreed upon by himself and the Lycan officers and Kanako and her officers. Granted, this had been a fast-drawn conclusion, but when it had been mentioned in passing to Rikyo and Gennai during the discussion of the transfer of headquarters, both had voiced tentative agreement. Keitaro, naturally, was all in favor of renewed action, and quickly gave his full approval.

* * *

Upon their arrival, Eizo took leave of Keitaro's company to join in the preparations, while Keitaro duly met with Rikyo in private.

Rikyo was having a discussion with another of his officers in his office when Keitaro knocked on the door.

"Come in," said Rikyo. As Keitaro stepped into the room, Rikyo's expression changed from one kind of serious to another. Turning to the other officer with whom he'd been talking, he said, "That will be all for now, thank you."

The officer stood up and bowed to both Rikyo and Keitaro, and then left the room.

"Please, sit," Rikyo said to Keitaro, motioning to one of the chairs on the side of the desk opposite to his own. Keitaro made a quick bow of his own and sat down. Rikyo scooted the papers in the center of his desk to one side, rolled his chair all the way forward and crossed his arms on the desk. His expression was serious but not hostile as he spoke.

"Are you alright?" He said frankly.

Somewhat startled by the question, he nevertheless quickly responded, "Yes sir."

Rikyo studied Keitaro for a moment, giving Keitaro's mind enough time to wander. _"Just what did Kanako tell him?" _He thought to himself.

"You're probably wondering why I asked to see you in private before restoring your command status," Rikyo said after a minute or two.

"Yes sir," Keitaro said again, trying hard to keep the conflicting emotions out of his voice.

Rikyo pauses again before answering. "As you probably know better than anyone else, Mr. Katsumoto, for all his prowess and knowledge, had been known go berserk from time to time when certain buttons of his got pressed ... when someone close to him died an unjust death usually was provocation enough. But then I don't have to tell you that."

Keitaro's efforts to keep his distress to himself rapidly fell apart as Rikyo began to read the story of the worst few days of Keitaro's life like an open book. Keitaro kept his mouth shut but Rikyo could hear his furiously increasing heartbeat and breathing loud and clear.

"I know about what happened at the Hinata Apartments, Keitaro. And I know about Ms. Otohime. For that I am truly sorry, my friend."

Before Keitaro could even finish forming the anger in his head towards Kanako for having told Rikyo the whole story, Rikyo once again showed his insight.

"If you're thinking that Kanako told me all this, you're wrong," Rikyo said, although not completely disarming that extra stab of anger in Keitaro. "I learned of the incident at Hinata on my own – Gennai sent some backup in that direction when he found out where you'd gone and that you and Kanako were attempting to intercept an enemy strike alone. Obviously they were well behind the two of you and too late to prevent anything. But of course they reported what they'd found. Kanako never said a word either to me or to Gennai. In fact, all she did was answer honestly that you had been temporarily laid up as a result of the battle, but she refused to give any details. However, it was inevitable that the nature of your 'injury' reached my ears all the same, and with the knowledge of what had happened to your friend it was not hard for me to put two and two together."

Rikyo waited a little longer this time before speaking again, offering Keitaro a chance to get a word in if he desired. Only when it became obvious that he had nothing to say did Rikyo continue, standing up now as he spoke.

"It is your responsibility as one of my highest officers to do whatever you must do to serve the greater interests of our people. If you in any way shape or form doubt your own capacity to lead our troops into battle with a level head and objective focus on our ultimate goals, then I expect you to resign from command without forcing me to take it away from you. Either way, you would of course retain a place in the battle to come and could still take some personal retribution for Ms. Otohime's death, but victory will be your ultimate revenge and we're not going to achieve that if our leadership isn't solid. Understood?"

Keitaro didn't reply immediately, instead taking a few slow, deep breaths in an effort to calm himself first. He was extremely agitated and figured there was little point in trying to hide that fact from someone half as perceptive as Rikyo, so he didn't bother to pretend that he was doing anything else. His superior patiently allowed Keitaro the time he needed to pull himself together.

"Sir," Keitaro began, his voice still strained but composed, "I will not deny the fact that this war has become something of a personal matter for me. But I assure you, nothing less than the complete and utter annihilation of our enemy will bring me satisfaction, and there is absolutely nothing that I will not do to achieve that end ... including discretion, if that's what will best serve our victory. And if I may point out, sir, that my actions which resulted in my 'injury' did not in any way endanger the mission at large and indeed proved to be our only shot at the enemy command that night. If the taste in my mouth when I finally came to later was anything to be believed, I'd swear that a mouthful of enemy brass is way beyond the help of spit and polish."

As if he had been trying to justify things to himself more than to Rikyo with his last comment, Keitaro suddenly put on a face of confidence when he nevertheless passionately stated, "I am quite capable of resuming my duties as commanding officer of your army, and I will lead them to victory or I will die trying."

* * *

Due to personnel and equipment being moved in small batches, and most of them taking roundabout ways to their destination, it took over 24 hours for the transfer to be completed. Enough of Gennai's vampires had remained behind at their own headquarters to, in conjunction with the automated defenses and advanced security features, ably defend it, and clever use of light, shadow and human visitors would obscure the difference in the building's population to any unwanted observers. Spotters had also been left around the foreign vampire to watch for any movement or developments, and even before the first of the transfers had arrived at the island reports were coming in of the enemy pulling back their defense line to the rearmost third of their previously occupied area. Rikyo decreed to all the new arrivals a day of well-earned rest, and then all officers were to report to the main conference room by 10pm that evening. Keitaro and Kanako's paths did not cross again until then.

* * *

Keitaro had arrived at the conference room first when the meeting was called, and when Kanako came into the room, their eyes met for the first time in the better part of two days. They were still seated next to each other, and Kanako didn't skip a stride as she walked over and sat down next to Keitaro. The full day of war preparations and rest had soothed his frayed nerves a bit, and he acknowledged her with a nod as she approached him. It was clear that neither of them wanted to let anyone else in on the tension between them, and they both put on their best Officer Faces as they awaited Rikyo's arrival and the start of the meeting. Everyone in the room though – particularly the vampires - could not help start a little when he arrived ... with Gennai at his side.

"Good evening, troops," began Rikyo as the two immortal elders were just sitting down, in his most no-nonsense and to the point tone of voice. "I think everyone in this room is well aware of the present situation, so why don't we just skip to the solution phase of this meeting?"

A round of nods answered him, and he looked over at Gennai as the vampire leader continued.

"After careful consideration of all options presented to us, Rikyo and I have decided in favor of the fast action camp," Gennai said, quickly prompting supportive nods around the table, both Keitaro and Kanako contributing.

"All the evidence we have suggests that the foreign vampires are, if anything, worse off than we are even in light of the recent disaster," Gennai resumed after a moment. "All the advantages are still with us ... for the moment. But the initiative is up for grabs. We no longer have the luxury of being able to wage a war of attrition. The foreign vampires may be expecting reinforcements. We are going to make sure that by the time they get here, there will be nothing left for them to reinforce."

Rikyo nodded and then took over. "This island is quite safe from any enemy attack or detailed observation. Thanks to the absence of human populations anywhere near us, we did not face the problem of explaining to nosy human officials why we were installing hidden mortar, machine gun, missile and sensor emplacements into our property. Any effort to get in close for reconnaissance purposes would easily be detected and eliminated, and the nearby shore terrain favors easy evasion of attempts to follow our boats from there. Security of base is no longer a concern."

Rikyo let that settle for a moment, and then went on. "This means that we can commit a large majority of our troops towards the new offensive, and this offensive will begin at once. Time is not on our side – if indeed enemy reinforcements are on their way, then those already here need only to hold on to win. We can finish off the current wave of invaders and stop the second from getting a foothold, but if the two enemy groups manage to combine then it's all over for us."

Gennai nodded and turned his head to face Kanako and Keitaro. "For all the foreign vampires know, they've removed any threat of attack from us for the immediate future. We should encourage them in that belief. Aside from the minimal reconnaissance effort needed to catch any major movements, all our people have been withdrawn from the perimeter of the enemy stronghold. While hopefully this will lend to surprise being on our side this time, either way it will mean that you will have minimal intelligence going into the area."

Keitaro and Kanako nodded in unison, and then Gennai's tone grew noticeably more grave as he spoke again.

"Even_ if_ we achieve surprise, this will be an uphill battle," he began. Even if they are not expecting any trouble, the bulk of the enemy's troops will have nothing better to do than set up defenses and patrol their lines while they wait for the cavalry to arrive. A full frontal assault does not seem like the best course of action."

Kanako had been listening intently to her elder, and, remembering another situation that she and Gennai had faced in the past, albeit on a much smaller scale, a deep grin spread across her face as she took a guess at the game plan.

"You want to focus our attack on the farthest corner of their defense line. Punch a hole in the most inaccessible place, and while the enemy is tripping themselves over their own defenses trying to get involved, we pour through the hole, get as mixed up among them as we can, and make tooth, blade and claw the orders of the night. Play our strength while avoiding theirs. Am I right?"

For just a moment a flash of enthusiasm crossed Kanako's face that would have made Keitaro very happy.

Gennai's face creased into a smile. "Every time we have forced the enemy to battle at melee range, the advantage has been decisively ours. Even during this last engagement, when the initial shock of the ambush passed and you charged through them to fight your way out, it was when numbers of our people broke through the noose of long guns and explosives that we inflicted almost all of our attrition that night. These intruders may be able to sling guns with the best of us and blow things up like pros, but take away the range and they don't seem to know the difference between a katana and a pocket knife."

The recent decline in morale began to creep back upwards as forces were allocated and the orders were given: attack at once. Keitaro and Kanako both shot out of their seats at the instant the meeting concluded, but before they even crossed halfway to the door they were hit with a big surprise.

"Hang back a moment, you two," Rikyo called to the pair, stopping them in their tracks as the remainder of the officer corps exited the room past them. Once they were alone, Rikyo continued.

"Why don't you two take a short breather and meet us in my office in 20 minutes. That should give us just enough time to catch the first boat out."

Keitaro and Kanako exchanged a quick confused glance.

"Sir," began Keitaro cautiously. "I appreciate the offer, but do you really think we have ti ..."

"Everything is taken care of, my friends. Just sit back for a moment and then enjoy the boat ride," Rikyo said with a friendly sigh as he and Gennai slowly stood up. The latter relished the look on the face of his right-hand woman for a moment before putting her confusion to rest.

"Oh come on Kanako, I know your intuition better than this. It's win or lose time, all the gloves are coming off. Rikyo and I are going into battle with you this time. You two have been earning your keep better than any elder could ever hope for. Now it's time for us to earn ours."

* * *

Meanwhile, back at Haruka's place, Motoko sat in front of Haruka's computer with a semi-puzzled look on her face as she read an email from Tsuruko. The older Aoyama was not especially fond of this form of communication, but as she and Motoko lead busy lives sometimes it was the only way to stay in touch, and as Haruka and Seta had asked them all not to tell _anyone _where they were staying until this whole affair was over, it really was the only way for Tsuruko to reach her now. But it was not the fact that Tsuruko had sent her a message, or even that she sent her a message now, that puzzled ... perhaps even slightly worried Motoko. Also in line with the requests of her temporary host, Motoko had not informed Tsuruko or anyone else about what had happened, but Tsuruko's message was little else but an urgent request that Motoko return to the dojo immediately. If something was moderately important, Tsuruko would usually bring the matter to Motoko where ever Motoko happened to be. Only when something was of the utmost importance did Tsuruko demand Motoko's journey back to the dojo. True, it was more of a 'strong request' in this case than an outright demand, but nevertheless Motoko thought it very strange. She wasn't sure how – Motoko did not suspect that any of her friends would go behind her back to tell Tsuruko about their recent tragedies – but she eventually decided that Tsuruko must have heard something about it, somehow. Hell, the fire at the very least had probably been on the news. Indeed, the more she thought about it, the not-quite-insistent wording Tsuruko had used in that main body of the message began to sound less disconcerting. Having found out about Motoko's troubles from a source other than Motoko herself, Tsuruko must be trying to encourage her to seek the safety of the dojo while at the same time making clear that by virtue of the fact that Motoko had _not _toldher herself, she realized that Motoko had not wanted her to know about what had happened would respect Motoko's intentions to handle the situation herself if that's what she wished. While it was true that Motoko did not want to involve her sister in the matter, and the last thing she wanted to do was leave her friends, the last line of Tsuruko's message read:

"_Please at least come by for a few days. There is something very important we have to talk about._

_Tsuruko"_

Motoko had no justifications or explanations to alleviate the disconcertion of this line. Even during the past few years, as their relationship had grown much more mutually respecting and friendly than had previously been the case, "we have something important to talk about" had never been the precursor to a conversation that Motoko had enjoyed. However unpleasant the conversations were though, Tsuruko had never called anything 'very important' unless it was exactly that. Almost reluctantly, but tempered with an uneasy curiosity, Motoko resolved that she would oblige her sister. First thing in the morning she'd let the others know where she was going and why, but for now, it was late, and she was tired.


	40. Anxiety

**Author's Note:**

**I hope that at least my core readers will have seen the new movie by the time they read this chapter! Underworld: Evolution is a most worthy continuation of this awesome story and does not disappoint very high expectations ... and, as a nice bonus, doesn't contradict anything I've written either! Anyway, I strongly encourage ALL my readers to see this movie at their earliest opportunity!**

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* * *

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That night, Motoko's sleep was ravaged by nightmares. From the instant she was mercifully rescued from her horror by her alarm clock Motoko could no longer recall any coherent thoughts or images, only a terrible foreboding sense of terror that eerily reminded her of the night when Keitaro and Naru had first been attacked. The sensation of urgency was markedly less than it had been on that night, and as her breathing and heartbeat returned to normal after a few minutes, the all-round intensity of the firestorm within her head began to quell too. When she came completely to her senses after a few more minutes, she noticed with a slightly embarrassed huff that the kimono she wore to sleep was so soaked with sweat as to give the appearance that she'd put the article on right after a bath without bothering to use a towel first. Shaking it all off as best she could, Motoko picked herself up out of bed, and after rolling up her bedding she grabbed a fresh set of clothes and walked quietly to Haruka's guest bathroom. She could hear the sounds of Shinobu making breakfast in the kitchen, but it didn't sound like anyone else was awake yet.

* * *

The hot water rinsed the film of sweat off of Motoko's body, and the steam refreshed her lungs and warmed her from the inside out. Even the mild scent Haruka's choice of soap, which Motoko could not help but think seemed strangely feminine for the only other woman she'd ever known who so often denied herself the small pleasures of womanhood the way she herself did, smelled nice to her right now. The young swordswoman also found herself readily agreeing with Haruka's endorsement of natural sponges as the tool that cleans and massages all at the same time. It almost forcibly granted her some small relaxation against the wanderings of her mind.

"_I do not fear my sister the way I used to," _Motoko thought to herself as she let another burst of hot water spray across her face. _"I was reminded of the night Keitaro was almost killed, but the dreams weren't quite like they were then either."_

Her face grew more solemn. _"I can't trust my intuition anymore. I didn't feel a thing before Mutsumi died. I have no idea if Keitaro is alive or dead. Perhaps I should have gone to Tsuruko for help a long time ago. It seems as though I have been unable to handle the situation myself after all. Keitaro's energies have completely rewritten all the rules I ever knew and I thought I could figure it all out on my own. Now I wonder how much might have been prevented had I swallowed my pride from the beginning ..."_

Motoko's thoughts ran throughout the remainder of her shower. By the time she came out of the bathroom everyone was already awake and eating breakfast, and by the time Motoko had finished packing what she needed for her trip, everyone had pretty much finished. But they were still sitting around the table, and Shinobu had of course ensured that there was food left for Motoko. It was pretty obvious when Motoko was planning on going somewhere when she appeared with her sword bagged and over her shoulder, and Motoko answered the questions before they were answered.

"I got an Email from Tsuruko that essentially amounted to an urgent request that I go see her. She says that we have something important to talk about," Motoko said, as she set down her sword and sat down to eat what Shinobu had left for her. Noting a look from Haruka, Motoko continued.

"No, I didn't tell Tsuruko anything about what's happened, but as I'm sure you all remember, she has always had a way of finding things out on her own. But I honestly have no idea what it is she has for me to hear, but it would be an awful coincidence if it had nothing to to with our present situation. If there's even a chance that she can help us, I think it's especially worthwhile for me to go."

Haruka was clearly not thrilled at the notion of one of her charges splitting from the rest of them, even if it was the most self-sufficient of the younger residents and even if she was in fact going somewhere that was more secure than her own place or the new place they'd all be moving to shortly. But she wasn't going to pretend that she had the right to detain Motoko against her will.

"I've come to implicitly trust your judgment, Motoko, so you have my blessing if you think this is for the best," Haruka said. "You know where the new duplex is, right?"

Motoko nodded.

"We'll probably be there by the time you get back. I'd just head straight there. We'll move the rest of your stuff."

Motoko smiled. "Thank you. I'm sorry to be leaving at a time like this, but I only do so with the hope that maybe Tsuruko knows something we don't or can otherwise help us out. And I'll be back as soon as circumstances allow."

"It's quite all right, best wishes from all of us," Haruka finished, her words drawing supporting nods from Shinobu and Suu.

For the short remainder of Motoko's breakfast, small talk was shared amongst the four friends. When Motoko had finished, she immediately bid her farewells and set out for Kyoto.

* * *

Keitaro and Kanako had dutifully taken the short break offered by their elders. If only because of the weight of the situation into which they were about to dive head-first, there was no awkwardness between them as they had walked together to the bunkers on the island that were the living quarters for any who stayed on the island. Although the Lycan island was of course much larger than Gennai's headquarters in the city, it was still not designed to accommodate such a large contingent of guests and many of the guests found themselves sharing rooms with permanent residents. Nevertheless, because they had not arrived together and because Keitaro had never spent enough time on the island to warrant permanent quarters of his own, he and Kanako had been assigned different guest quarters this time. They parted ways at the bunkers to gather their personal gear from their respective rooms, and quickly met up again outside on their way to meet back up with Rikyo and Gennai. Neither had spoken on their way in, but now on their way out it was again Kanako who tried to make conversation.

"This really is a nice island you Lycans have got set up here. Maybe once this is over I'll see if Rikyo sees fit to accept me as Gennai's attaché to the Lycan community," Kanako said, doing her best to sound casual.

"You'd be the logical choice for that assignment, you having the most experience being among us Lycans and all." Keitaro's reply was decidedly neutral in tone and left Kanako unsure of how to take it, but she had decided even before she'd said anything to give Keitaro the benefit of the doubt if there was any doubt to be had.

"What are you going to do?" Kanako asked.

"What do you mean?" Neutrality was again the dominant tone in Keitaro's response.

"When the war is over. What will you do then?"

Keitaro realized then that 'when the war was over' was not something that had even crossed his mind since Mutsumi died, the merciless destruction of the monsters who'd tortured, defiled and murdered her being the only thing that had consumed his thoughts. Simply going home to his life at the Hinata Apartments was clearly not an option. Indeed, very quickly that line of thought made him question the wisdom of re-associating with his human friends after what had happened, or at least to the point of living with them on a daily basis. No, even for the brief moment in which the notion was at the center of his thoughts he could not stand the thought of never seeing them again. But he honestly had no idea what he was going to do.

"I don't know," Keitaro said softly after thinking silently to himself for a minute or two. By then they were almost back at the headquarters building, and Keitaro wanted to end this line of talk well before getting back on track with Rikyo and Gennai. "We'll talk about these things later, OK?"

Very respectful of Keitaro's wish to end this conversation now and quietly satisfied by Keitaro's suggestion that they would talk later, Kanako obliged him.

"OK," she said simply, and then, as Keitaro reached for the door to the headquarters building, Kanako firmly planted her hand on his shoulder. "But we both have the same goal right now. I'm with you until we finish it."

Kanako then got the first truly sincere smile from Keitaro, albeit a somewhat weak one, that she'd gotten in days. "Thank you."

* * *

Rikyo and Gennai were ready to go and waiting when Keitaro and Kanako returned. There was no need for subtle transit now, and the entire force of Japanese immortals was heading back to the battlefield in only three groups – a limit set only by the capacity of all the boats that they could get their hands on. Being that now even the Lycan island was to be manned only by a skeleton crew, it was decided that command of the island was very important on the off-chance that the enemy was planning some foolish attack, and so Eizo was left in charge of the defense while the other four leaders left with the first wave. From the mainland everyone headed straight to the enemy stronghold, waiting only as long as it took for the entire force to assemble to prepare for the assault.

* * *

There could be no intensive pre-attack recon sweep, and so Rikyo, Gennai and company instead poured over some rough sketches and photographs, the best that the efforts of the scouts could provide without revealing themselves and their intentions. While there was very little indication of what the defenses might be, it did show several potential points of entry that would serve their purposes well. The enemy perimeter was oddly pear-shaped, seemingly dictated by two large warehouses and a power control hut that they still wanted to control that happened to be slightly off center for the smaller area they now occupied. It's relative vulnerability was equally obvious to the enemy and it appeared to be more heavily defended than anywhere else, there being the most visible activity there. However, just above the point where the smaller part of the pear met the larger part, the extra defenses very quickly thinned out. Striking here from both sides looked to be the best plan. The enemy troops in the smaller half of the pear could be bottlenecked at least long enough to let the rest of the friendly force rapidly disperse themselves throughout the larger half, and once that was done, the general melee could really be unleashed. Not wasting any more time, the Japanese immortals split into two groups, one led by Rikyo and Keitaro and the other by Gennai and Kanako. The scouts were reassigned as snipers to pick off a little extra attrition where ever possible, and as the excitement of the moment mounted, the teams were in position.

Both Keitaro and Rikyo peered though their binoculars at their designated strike point. They had gotten as close as they thought they could get with their entire team without being seen, and they could now make out more details of what they were up against. As had been the case before, it appeared to be a situation of relatively few foreign vampires manning medium and a few heavy weapon emplacements, and commanding remote-controlled defenses such as machine guns and what looked like more explosive booby-traps. Many of these things were concealed or camouflaged as inoffensive objects, but the painful experience of their last attack was not forgotten, and these deadly surprises were a lot less hidden now that the attackers knew what they were looking for. Rikyo called forward all the rifles and grenade launchers within his team.

"Alright everyone, listen carefully," Rikyo said quietly to the several dozen soldiers now thus armed. "We are going to move forward and get as close as we can before we start the music. Everyone else will follow us, and the second any of you even think you've been seen, immediately engage your nearest target. And the second anyone hears a gunshot or an explosion regardless of what side it comes from, everyone is to open fire and rush forward immediately. Everything depends on us being able to get mixed up with the enemy before any lines are drawn. If we don't, this could easily end up being a costly stalemate that we can ill-afford. Keep that in mind. Everyone on the same page here?"

A quick round of nods.

"Everyone ready?"

More enthusiastic nods.

"Then let's go."

The lead elements moved quickly and quietly forward, followed only a short distance behind by the main body. As had been expected with so large a group, they didn't get too terribly close before two of the troopers from Rikyo and Keitaro's team and one from Gennai and Kanako's felt that they had been seen and fired almost simultaneously. Two of the three were armed with grenade launchers, and the armor-piercing incendiary round from the rifleman was enough to detonate the explosive device disguised as an abandoned truck tire. Thus it was to the sound of these three explosions that the entire force of Japanese Lycan and vampires sprang forward with that incredible speed endowed to their kind, and preceded by a full volley of bullets and grenades the covered the considerable distance to their target in about 5 seconds.

* * *

While the foreign vampires had clearly gone to some trouble to set up their defenses, with the bulk of these located at the entry points destroyed ahead of their attackers it quickly became clear that the enemy had not been expecting an attack this time. The small number of foreign vampires at the sites of the attacks were quickly brushed aside, and while more enemy troopers were fast moving to join the battle, the method for the attack immediately proved itself. The placement of buildings and the foreign vampires' own defenses was creating confusion on the larger half of the pear, and while intense fighting contained the situation in the smaller area, dozens of Japanese immortals scattered almost randomly into the rest of the occupied area.

Keitaro and Rikyo had managed to stay together, and the two of them kicked in the front door of the first building they came to. It was a fair-sized warehouse showroom, and so even in the intensity of the moment it surprised both Lycans to find only 3 enemy vampires in there. Though alerted to the danger by the preceding explosions and gunfire, the vampires were now armed and ready for action, but it looked as though they were a last minute cleanup crew intend on packing up what little equipment remained there. The facility looked as though it had been used as a barrack, and the last few rucksacks of personal items, rolls of bedding, and a few televisions and stereos were lying lined up near the door.

Keitaro was armed with a grenade launcher, and so his first shot took out all four vampires before they'd managed more than a few short bursts of gunfire between them. Neither Lycan had been hit.

"Looks like they were packing up," commented Rikyo as he exchanged a glance with his compatriot. Without allowing the potential implications of that fact sink in fully, they quickly swept the rest of the building, and finding it empty, broke out the back and into the next building down. This building was completely empty of both vampires and any associated paraphernalia. Rikyo felt his heart begin to sink and Keitaro felt his blood beginning to boil as the two of them exited that building. Now, barely 20 minutes into the attack, the sounds of battle had already died down considerably, and most of what remained seemed to be coming from the small end of the pear. Aside from the flickering of flames from the numerous fires, the only movement either Rikyo or Keitaro could see was the zippy silhouettes of their own people, running in and out of buildings and alleyways, with only the occasional gunshot, scream or roar to mark their progress. Exchanging another glance, this one much more a realization of the reality of the moment, Keitaro took a deep breath and closed his eyes as he and Rikyo began to walk towards a small parking lot in front of another building where a small collection of blank-faced soldiers were already gathering.

* * *

The full range of negative emotions from simple disappointment to full despair painted the faces of the troops as the situation was debriefed. The bird had flown. They were too late. Using their own tactics of evacuating singly or in small groups in random directions, the foreign vampires had given the slip to the small number of stakeout personnel. Only the small decoy contingent had remained behind, and it even this group had been preparing to leave. They had clearly not been expecting an attack, so it immediately seemed as though the belief that the foreign vampires assumed that the Japanese immortals had been weakened beyond the capacity for another attack was true, but this was a small gain in the face of the loss of most of what remained of the invading army. The enemy would surely get news of the strike soon, and any advantage that Rikyo and Gennai held in regards of being underestimated were lost.

The only bright spot to the situation was the fact that six prisoners had been taken. They had immediately been sent back to the island under heavy escort for interrogation. Against Keitaro's protests that he be assigned the responsibility, Kanako had been placed in control of the prisoners, and she and Rikyo had left with them. Gennai and Keitaro had remained behind to scour every inch of the former enemy base for any useful information. The enemy was finally getting smarter, and neither any useful intelligence nor any significant quantities of any commodity had been left for the defenders to get their hands on, only some insignificant details and general facts that were either unimportant, already known or already known to be false. Everyone was frustrated and Keitaro was positively fuming, and Gennai and Keitaro set out for the island with the rest of their troops a few hours before sunrise, virtually empty handed.

* * *

Motoko arrived at the Aoyama dojo in the early evening. She had made much of the journey through the forest on foot as she preferred to do, and when she got close to the dojo, she noticed that the students usually on spotting, tracking and camouflage training out in this part of the forest were not there. When she actually walked into the dojo area itself, she was even further struck by the very unusual absence of people. Normally the dojo was a bustle of activity – now there were only a handful of people to be seen at all. Wondering if the lack of students and teachers alike had anything to do with what Tsuruko wished to speak with her about, she shrugged it off for the moment and made her way towards the central training area. Tsuruko personally taught the most advanced students there most of the time, and the evening classes would be starting shortly. Motoko hoped to catch her sister before they did, then maybe she could join in on the class as an icebreaker. Given her own failing confidence, a little refresher would do her some good anyway.

As it was, Motoko got another surprise to find the central training area completely deserted. You could count the number of times Tsuruko had completely canceled the advanced classes in the entire time that she'd been in charge of the dojo on one hand – she taught class when she was sick, even once less than 36 hours after having her femur broken in two places when the platform she and another student had been sparring on collapsed, forcing Tsuruko into a very bad landing on that leg. In the rematch that took place, the student had decided to 'take it easy' on Tsuruko, since she was injured and all. The student paid for his assumption that Tsuruko had been slowed down by her injury with a few humiliating minutes trying to get his wind back on the floor of the repaired platform, and a distinctly bokken-shaped bruise across his chest. "Nothing short of death will stop a determined opponent," Tsuruko had told the student as _she_ had helped _him_ back down to ground level. "If you assume you opponent has been incapacitated, you only incapacitate yourself."

"Is that you, Motoko?" Came Tsuruko's unmistakable voice from the other side of the main office door.

"All knowing as always," was Motoko's reply, as she opened the door and stepped inside. "What on earth is going on around here? Where is everyone?"

Tsuruko's face took on that uber-serious look that still made Motoko uncomfortable even today. "Why don't you head on down to the guest cabins and settle in for the night. I've got some very ... difficult news for you, and I'd like you to be well rested when we talk."

"_Yeah, like I'm going to get a wink of sleep now," _Motoko thought to herself, but answered, "Very well, sister. You think we might at least have dinner tonight?"

Tsuruko cracked the faintest of smiles. "Of course."

Motoko bowed and then stepped back out of the office. If she had any doubts left that something very fishy indeed was going on with Tsuruko, these were soundly put to rest now. She'd barely exchanged a few lines of dialog with her and that reality was ridiculously obvious. But it was extremely rare for Tsuruko to beat around the bush the way she was now. And Tsuruko's serious expression had not been one of anger, Motoko couldn't decide what it was. It was perhaps this most uncharacteristic ambiguity that disturbed Motoko the most about the situation.

When Motoko had chosen a cabin – the lack of people around the dojo gave her a wide selection to choose from – she called upon hot water and steam for the second time in the same day to sooth and center herself, this time taking advantage of the large, spa-style bathtubs provided in the rooms for that very purpose. After a good soak, she got out of the tub, got dressed, and lay down on the bed. It was almost dark and she imagined that Tsuruko would be calling her to dinner soon.

"_It would be hard to sit through an entire meal without saying a word about why she asked me out here," _Motoko thought, as she sought to strengthen her patience. _"Worst case scenario I'll know all about it tomorrow. I can wait. Nothing good ever comes out of pressuring Tsuruko too much."_


	41. A bombshell for Motoko

"Mmm ... plain fish and steamed rice, washed down with a dash of homemade sake and cold water. Shinobu spoils us all, it's true, but nothing will ever remind me of my roots quite like such a simple yet satisfying meal as this," Motoko said lightly and with a small smile, as she and Tsuruko knelt down on opposite sides of a small table in Tsuruko's personal cabin. Motoko's words were sincere enough, though humor had never been her forte, and especially given her overall state of mind with everything that had happened in the past week, her attempt to make a chuckle of the situation fell somewhat flat and she couldn't even upgrade her own smile from the lighthearted one she'd started with.

Albeit for very, very different reasons, Tsuruko's appreciation for a joke was also all but bottomed, though the straightforward meaning of Motoko's words was enough to allow her a smile that at least matched that of her sister. _"I'm glad that your roots still strike a chord within you, Motoko. For tomorrow the depth of that chord will be subject to a great test," _Tsuruko thought to herself.

"How long has it been since we've had dinner together, anyway? Just the two of us, outside the dojo cafeteria?" Tsuruko replied aloud.

Motoko shook her head as she took up her chopsticks. "Shoot, have we _ever?_"

There was a minute or two of silence as the Aoyama sisters took their first few bites of food before Motoko decided that Tsuruko had had enough of a chance to make the first move.

"So ... you want to at least give me a hint about why you called me out here?" She asked frankly.

Tsuruko sighed as she chewed a small piece of fish, swallowing it before answering. "Actually, no I wouldn't. It's not something that can be discussed in bits and pieces. I was rather hoping to just enjoy a nice dinner for now."

Though she had told herself that she wouldn't, Motoko could not help but feel a jab of frustration. "After all your foreshadowing of a 'difficult conversation,' you can hardly expect me to kick back and absent-mindedly enjoy the evening without at least trying to find out what's going on." She said.

"You're right. I can't expect you to do that. I can only ask you to. And I'm asking you."

Only the fact that Motoko could not help but be moved by Tsuruko's most uncharacteristic use of polite request over uncompromising command stopped her from arguing the point any further. Motoko finished a bite of rice before resolving close the question for the night.

"Even if I haven't always agreed with your methodology, I think I've always come to terms with your ultimate intentions and objectives. I would like to jump right into business and get that cleared up before we get on to pleasure, and I know that you ordinarily would too, so you must have a reason for wanting to do this the way you do. I'll drop the issue for tonight then."

Tsuruko offered another weak smile. "Thank you," she replied simply, as she topped off both their sake cups.

* * *

The two of them ate in silence for a couple of minutes before someone spoke again. The silence was blasting Motoko's eardrums louder than a battery of jet engines and was every bit as unpleasant. She couldn't bring up the most obvious issues, and couldn't even casually inquire about the lack of people around the dojo, as the answer to that was almost certainly related to said obvious issues too. Nails on a chalkboard would have grated on her nerves less.

"Well ... you mentioned to me a while back that you were planning to expand the archery curriculum. How is that coming along?" Motoko offered, calling upon every scrap of her ability to try and appear casual and relaxed.

"Very well I should think. Much as the students love the sword they seem very eager to broaden their horizons."

Tsuruko was better than Motoko and concealing her underlying thoughts and feelings, but the more she watched for it, the more Motoko could see that her older sister was just as uncomfortable as she was. This in turn made Motoko even more uncomfortable, as she could not imagine why Tsuruko didn't want to get done with whatever it was that they apparently had to get done with. What was so special about tomorrow? What the hell was this all about anyway? This situation would be decidedly unpleasant at the best of times, but most especially with things being the way they were with the recent loss of both her home and a good friend, the last thing in the world she felt like doing was leaving her friends alone when they needed her the most just to sit around and have Tsuruko taunt her with 'issues' that she refused to talk about. Right behind that on the list of things she absolutely did not want right now was to fight with Tsuruko, but nevertheless her idea that once they were chatting it would be easier to get through the night was backfiring tenfold and her aggravation level was suddenly going through the roof.

If Tsuruko was better at disguising her own feelings than Motoko, she was also better at seeing through the disguises of others. Motoko's discomfort was perfectly obvious to Tsuruko even if the elder Aoyama didn't have the knowledge of why Motoko should be uncomfortable. Tsuruko was not at all enjoying what she was doing to her sister, and she most definitely was not looking forward to tomorrow when all Motoko's questions would be answered.

The two didn't manage much more than a few other short exchanges of small talk for the duration of their meal. When they had finished eating, Motoko helped clean up, and then they parted ways for the night.

* * *

Kanako almost flinched when she opened the door to the gym and a loud 'thwack' that almost sounded like a crunch greeted her ears. Once Keitaro and Gennai had returned, they, Rikyo, Eizo and Kanako herself had been engaged in deliberations as to the next course of action until almost noon that same day, when everyone was utterly exhausted and the meeting was adjourned. Keitaro's exhaustion was matched only by his fury and he had stormed out of the conference room at the conclusion. Kanako's instinct had been to follow hard on his heels but she had been snagged by Gennai on her way out of the room and caught up in a good 15 minutes of last-minute consultations on the details of the defense of their own headquarters. When Kanako had extricated herself from that conversation, she found out which room Keitaro was staying in, only to find that he was not there. Asking around, she finally learned that Keitaro had gone to the island's gymnasium.

Keitaro didn't bat Kanako a glance as she slowly walked towards him. He just kept laying into the punching bag with all his pent-up anger, sending increasingly large puffs of stuffing flying outwards with each punch. Already the gym's second punching bag lay where it fell, its chain snapped and the bag itself battered into worthlessness. As she got closer, she could see the pale grey color in his eyes and the tightly clenched set of sharp teeth that would be biting into his gums if they grew any longer. As she closed to maybe 10 feet behind him, she stopped walking, pulled back the hood of her sunproof cloak and stood silent for a moment. Sensing Kanako stop, Keitaro put one last burst of energy into a punch and nearly put his hand through the bag, ripping a gaping hole through the center and creating a cloud of the powdery stuffing around him. He too then stood silent for a moment, taking deep breaths and very deliberately bringing his eyes and teeth back to their human condition.

"Please, Keitaro. You need to rest," Kanako said after a couple minutes. "No doubt another big night awaits us tomorrow."

"A big day of what? Wild goose chases? Stakeouts? Another parade through some empty warehouse district perhaps? If I hear 'Get ready for battle, troops, this is the big one' one more time I swear I'm gonna hurl," was Keitaro's curt reply. His voice was at a normal speaking volume but his tone carried the unmistakable cue of his frustration.

Kanako took his words with a grain of salt. "I don't know, Keitaro. No one does. But whatever it is, it will be a lot harder to do if you're underslept."

Keitaro didn't reply, he just stood there, continuing to breath deeply. Kanako gave him another minute and then walked the rest of the way up to him, putting her hand on his shoulder.

"Please. Let's go."

Against the will of his anger, Kanako's calmness was calming him down too, just enough to make him see the sense in her words. Of course, he _was _also very tired, and her persuasion of rest tapped into that. He took a very slow, deep breath, and then answered her.

"Alright," he said simply.

Kanako closed her eyes and nodded. Pulling her protective hood back over her head, she motioned with her arm for him to lead the way.

* * *

They walked together in silence to the bunker where Keitaro's room was. She followed him all the way to his door, where they both stopped and looked at each other.

"Are you going to be alright by yourself? If you find that company helps you to keep your mind from going places you'd rather it not, I don't mind sleeping on the floor," Kanako said. She was not up to her old tricks this time but was in fact genuinely concerned for Keitaro's well-being and had no intention of deliberately playing this situation to her personal advantage should he accept her offer.

Keitaro studied her eyes as he pondered his response. He did not at all mind Kanako's affection as a whole, even if he found the direction she often tried to take it to be inappropriate. However, she had certainly left no question in his mind that she enjoyed her feel-goods from him and that she capitalized on every semi-tactful – and some totally untactful ones too – opportunity to take one. Save for the incident in front of Naru and the other Hinata residents he sometimes found these moments a little disconcerting but otherwise harmless, but now he was in absolutely no mood to play an object of desire. He did not want a fight but he knew he would react badly any kind of provocation. But while Kanako was skilled with deception, she could also radiate sincerity when she was in fact being sincere. After a few minutes, he was satisfied that her offer was straight, and he had to admit to himself that his thoughts probably would be made a little less miserable by her company today.

"Sure. You can sleep here," Keitaro replied, somewhat vacantly.

Kanako cracked a weak smile. "Let me go grab a few things from my room and I'll be right back," she said, and gave Keitaro a friendly pat on his shoulder.

Keitaro just nodded in response, and she turned and began to walk away. Without knowing why, Keitaro suddenly felt his eyes tearing up and a surge of emotion threatening to break him down right there at the door to his room.

"Kanako ..." Keitaro called out, his voice wavering and cracking in such a way as to then add an urgent sense of self-consciousness to the sudden emotional whirlwind raging in his head. He faked a cough as Kanako turned back around to face him and exercised a considerable amount of self-control to force his voice back to normal.

"... Thank you," he finished in the most stoic voice he could manage.

Naturally Kanako did not miss the sudden emotion in Keitaro's voice, but quickly decided to leave it alone for now. "You're welcome," she replied simply with a short bow of her head, and then turned around again and kept walking back to her room.

* * *

As soon as he was inside his room, Keitaro began breathing heavily and he allowed a short flurry of tears to hit the ground. Sitting down on the corner of his bed and wiping his eyes, he tried to collect himself.

"_What the hell was that?" _He thought to himself. He pondered his own question for a moment before answering it. _"I'm just tired, that's all. Tired and a little on edge. Kanako was right. I need to rest."_

Satisfied for the moment with his own explanation, he stood up, quickly got undressed and went into the bathroom for a quick shower. When he turned off the water, he could hear the sounds of Kanako moving around in the room. He put on the pair of shorts and light tee-shirt that he planned to sleep in and came out of the bathroom to see Kanako spreading the sheets from her own bed out on the floor next to the bed. Kanako looked over at him.

"Feel a little better?" She asked.

Keitaro nodded weakly. "Yeah."

"Good. I could use a quick rinse myself and then we'd better get some sleep," Kanako said. Without thinking about it, she untucked her shirt and pulled it off over her head. It wasn't until her hands were already over her back and in the process of pulling her trademark pale grey elastic bra over her head as well that her eyes found Keitaro's face again and caught the contorted but unreadable expression on his face. Once again she was running on old habits and had momentarily forgotten that Keitaro did not share the either the non-issue attitude or the outright appreciation that most of the other people she'd been paired up with for various missions in the past had for her tendency to get naked whenever and where ever it suited her to do so without much thought to the presence of others.

"Sorry," Kanako said sheepishly, and her hands moved from over her shoulders to high up on her sides where she pulled her bra back down. She grabbed the set of long johns that she intended to sleep in out of the bag she'd brought and slipped past Keitaro into the bathroom, hoping that she had not made him angry. He followed her in with his eyes, and when their gazes met again as she turned around to close the door, Kanako was relieved to see the faintest of smiles on Keitaro's face as he slowly shook his head. She returned him a much wider smile and slowly closed the door as she bowed politely.

* * *

Halfway across Japan on that same morning, Motoko woke up just as the sun was rising. To her pleasant surprise she had in fact managed to get some decent sleep. With a purpose, she quickly got out of bed, remade the sheets, got dressed, and walked briskly to the central training area, where she expected Tsuruko would be doing her morning exercises and katas. Her sister was indeed there, in the middle of a graceful sword kata when Motoko came around the corner of the armory wall. Motoko recognized the kata that Tsuruko was performing, it was actually a two-person kata where one person used a katana, and the second a naginata. As there was no one else in sight, Motoko could guess why Tsuruko had chosen this particular kata on this morning. Even with her impatience with her sister for the delay of their business, the thought brought her some sentimental happiness, and with a modest smile, she pulled her sword out from her obi and hung it up on an empty sword mount on the armory wall. Taking a quick look at the rack of naginatas, she picked one out that was to her liking and walked out onto the practice circle with Tsuruko. Quickly counting Tsuruko's moves, Motoko thrust the naginata outwards just in time to lightly tap the flat of Tsuruko's blade with her own. Tsuruko didn't miss a beat, making the next moves of the kata a little faster than she had been moving while she was alone. Motoko likewise didn't miss a beat, executing her next moves at a speed to match Tsuruko's.

The blade dance went on for another 10 minutes or so, each participant interacting with the other in absolute harmony and coordination. As the last moves of the dance were completed, Tsuruko smoothly resheathed her sword as a completion of her last follow-thru, and Motoko similarly landed the blunt end of her weapon on the ground so that it stood up in her hand like a standard.

Tsuruko smiled and bowed, a gesture mimicked by Motoko.

"Very nice, Motoko. Thank you," Tsuruko said.

"My pleasure. Thank you too."

Tsuruko was silent for a moment, and then gave Motoko a glance that seemed akin to suppressed regret or sadness. The sentimental joy that Motoko was feeling began to leak out of her like yolk through a cracked eggshell.

"Well, I've kept you waiting in the dark long enough, I think. I suppose I owe you some explanations," Tsuruko said somberly.

Motoko regained her own seriousness. "Yes, I think you do."

Tsuruko nodded. "Please come with me to my cabin. We will talk there."

"Alright."

Motoko walked back over to the armory wall, replaced the naginata, and put her sword back through her obi. Tsuruko waited until Motoko got back to her side, and then the two of them walked in silence to Tsuruko's personal cabin.

* * *

Once inside the cabin, Tsuruko got each of them a small cup of green tea, and then each of them knelt down on a small mat on opposite ends of a small table.

"To understand fully what it is I have to tell you, I must first explain its connections to the past," Tsuruko began. "Of course you remember how our clan made a name for itself centuries ago."

"Of course. Protecting humanity from demons," Motoko answered.

"Yes. Protecting humanity from demons ... tell me, sister, exactly how much do you know about demons?"

The question surprised Motoko a little. "Well ... I know that they can take many forms, either independently or through the bodies of humans, animals and even inanimate objects. Their Ki signatures though will be diff ..."

Tsuruko held up her hand to stop Motoko. "... through the bodies of humans ..." she repeated Motoko's words. "Through the bodies of humans ..."

Motoko's guts suddenly twisted themselves into a dozen knots as she guessed where Tsuruko was going with this.

Tsuruko's expression went ultra-serious. "Demons who inhabit a human body have been called many different things around the world. For our purposes, two of those names are of particular significance. Vampires ... and werewolves."

Now Motoko's heart was beating so fast and so loud that it sounded about as loud as Tsuruko's voice in Motoko's ears.

"For what it's worth, let me at least end your uncertainty. Yes, I know that your friend Keitaro Urashima is a werewolf. And I know that his companion, Kanako Urashima, is a vampire. I've known about Keitaro since very shortly after he was turned, and I've known about Kanako even longer."

Tsuruko then gave Motoko a chance to speak. It took Motoko a few minutes to get her words together.

"Why did you never say anything about it to me if you've known all along?" Motoko asked.

"By all rights I could ask you the same question."

Motoko felt a twinge of anger now as Tsuruko turned the question back onto her. "Because I didn't know what you would do. Werewolf or not, Keitaro is a good person. I saw no reason to invite potential conflict for no good reason at all."

Tsuruko's tone of voice also intensified. "So you were worried about our clan taking an issue with monsters, is that it?"

Hearing Tsuruko call Keitaro a monster made Motoko genuinely angry.

"He's NOT a monster! How can you call him that? You've met him! You've spoken with him! You've even fought with him because he chose to defend me in the face of all the abuse I'd dealt out to him at that time! And in all the time that's passed since then, life at the Hinata Apartments had never been better! How the hell does a monster fit into that equation?"

Tsuruko's eyes narrowed. "Alright. Just for argument's sake, let us say that Keitaro himself is not a monster. Fine. But surely you realize that Keitaro is not the only werewolf in Japan, and Kanako is not the only vampire. Can you declare so righteously that all of these beings are not monsters?"

Motoko's memory could not help but recall some of the less pleasant encounters she and the others had had. First, obviously, there was the incident that brought all of them into this situation in the first place – it was only blind luck that Keitaro, Naru and Kitsune didn't all die that night. Then there were the encounters with the Lycans sent to retrieve Keitaro before he agreed to go with them. No one had been hurt in either occasion but it had come very close to getting ugly the second time. After that there was the first encounter with the foreign vampires in the woods, when Keitaro had been badly wounded by silver bullets and she herself had killed a vampire to save him, only to be saved in turn by Keitaro when another vampire had gotten the drop on her. The bruise around her neck from that incident had taken well over a week to disappear completely. And, of course, there was the bit about the death of Mutsumi and the destruction of the Hinata Apartments.

The delay in Motoko's response while she was remembering these things was enough to answer Tsuruko's question.

"I didn't think so," Tsuruko said after a minute or two. "So allow me to further that line of thought. Just on the simplest, most obvious level, what would you say is the greatest difference between our clan as it exists today and our clan as it existed, say, 700 years ago?"

Motoko was not in the mood for guessing games, and responded only with a glare.

"Count the names on my current registry and compare them to the historical records. What you will see is a dramatic decrease in our overall numbers and volumes of names representing those who died in service to our ancestral lords between 700 and 200 years ago, and that decline is not because of any plague or famine. As you recalled yourself, it was the duty of anyone serving under the Aoyama name to defend humanity from demons. Werewolves and vampires were not always so lawful as they are today. Centuries ago they were free to terrorize, kill and feed upon humans as they pleased, and our family rose to meet them when and wherever we could. But as you must have come to realize after years of living with one, the powers of these creatures far exceed that of any human."

Tsuruko leaned forward as she continued, bringing her face closer to Motoko's.

"_Scores _of our brave samurai would fail to come home after a mission, and at the _best _of times those who did return would claim maybe 5 or 6 vampires or werewolves dead to show for it. But they saved village after village from the massacres that would otherwise have taken place. Such was our responsibility. Such was our duty."

Motoko absorbed these words with a steely and silent sense of dread. She had a greater understanding of why Tsuruko was set against Keitaro now and she could offer no reply to what Tsuruko was saying. But why then did Tsuruko never even mention this to her, let alone do anything about it, if she'd known about Keitaro all this time? She could not argue with Tsuruko's history lecture – Motoko knew none of this before but knew that Tsuruko would never make something like that up. But surely Tsuruko had not called her out here just to ream her for being friends with a 'monster' over two years into a situation that she'd known about since the beginning. Where was she going with this?

Motoko took a deep breath. "I didn't know any of these things. But even with that being as it was, what does that have to do with Keitaro and the here and now? You said yourself, the fighting between our clan and immortals ended some 200 years ago."

"You just answered your own question, Motoko. These creatures are immortal. 200 years means little to their kind. Many of them who live today are the very same individuals who once bathed in the blood of our ancestors."

Much of Motoko's initial gusto evaporated as she considered what Tsuruko was telling her. It was still no good reason to have anything against Keitaro or Kanako personally, but Motoko suddenly found it very hard to argue against Tsuruko's position on immortals as a whole. It was true that she had grown somewhat distant from her family's historical life – at least compared to Tsuruko – but she still carried a great deal of pride for her heritage and ancestry. Motoko had to admit to herself that had a dear friend not been one, someone to personally show her that being an immortal did not automatically make one a monster, she would most likely have quickly developed some hatred for immortals too after hearing what she'd just heard.

Wait a minute. Yes, it was clear that Tsuruko hated Lycans and vampires as a species. But Tsuruko was not one to just sit on a resentment – if she had grief with anyone or anything, she would go any semi-reasonable length to settle it. No, Tsuruko did not call her out here just to complain about her choice of company. There was something more.

"So what is it that you intend to do?" Motoko asked softly.

Tsuruko backed off a bit and settled back onto her knees. "It's not what I intend to do, Motoko," she replied. "It's what I've already done, and what continues to be done as we speak."

Their eyes locked into each other as Tsuruko laid the last of her cards out on the table.

"The better part of three years ago, one of my advanced students came back from vacation almost a week early. She had been spending time at a small fishing port getting a taste of the sea, and she brought back a strange tale. She said a rather large freighter entered the port early one evening, a vessel clearly having nothing to do with fishing. She decided to check it out. As the ship docked and the first of the crew began to disembark, she noted that they rather rudely rejected an offer by the dockmaster for assistance in unloading. Some of them disappeared for a short while and returned with half a dozen large trucks, into which the passengers and crew of the ship began loading some large crates. But the most interesting thing she reported was that when she got close, she began to feel some very unusual but very powerful Ki energies coming from the new arrivals. It was at that point that she decided that something was very off there and she brought the matter to my attention."

Once again Motoko could not believe what she was hearing. Tsuruko knew about the foreign vampires too?

"I personally followed her back to the docks, but we didn't get there until the next afternoon. The ship she spoke of was already gone, but we did a little asking around. Not surprisingly the dock hands were intrigued by this unusual event, and a few of them who were just getting off work when the last of the new arrivals left the docks decided to follow them out of sheer curiosity. They told us where they'd gone. We went there ourselves, and I too was quickly convinced that something was very strange. It was a very nice day, but all the windows in the warehouse where these people had gone were completely blotted out. We went in closer and then I too could sense the energies on the other side of the wall. There wasn't much we could find out from the outside at that time, but I wanted this situation watched. We stayed in the area for another few hours, and then a relief team arrived. I ordered the warehouse watched and anyone coming or going from it to be tracked. The new arrivals proved to be most secretive, but within a week we were able to figure out exactly what they were. Vampires. But figuring out what they were doing here proved more difficult."

Tsuruko took a sip of her tea before continuing. "They began to branch out. It was obvious that they were looking for something. After they were observed following or inquiring about a number of individuals more than once – Kanako Urashima being one of them – I decided to investigate their targets as well. At first it seemed to us that these foreign vampires were after humans, and it made no sense to us at all. But we prepared to do what we could to protect these 'humans' all the same. It wasn't until these new vampires attempted to capture their targets that we saw that the targets were themselves either more vampires or werewolves, yet we had been unable to sense the immortal energies in them. It would seem that our native immortals are far more skilled at containing and controlling their Ki than are their counterparts from across the seas."

"These foreign vampires quickly showed themselves to be embarrassingly incompetent. For all their careful preparation and the advantage of surprise, so far as we know they failed to capture even one of several dozen identified targets and often took losses themselves in the process. I had no idea what to think of things at first, but then the situation dawned on me. They were here to declare war on our native immortals, and I saw an opportunity in the situation."

A whole new type of sickness gripped Motoko's stomach as a theory formed in her head about what Tsuruko was going to say next.

"There are far too few of our clan left to wage a war against our old enemies alone. But with the apparent inability of the foreign vampires to do so either, I went to them shortly after their first failure with an offer of help. Even after I explained who I represented, what our common interest was, and proved to them that I knew both what they were and what their targets where, my offer was refused. But then the Japanese werewolves and vampires struck back with a devastating counter-attack. I went to them again, and after that stinging defeat they were not so prideful as they had been before."

"The foreign vampires accepted my offer to help them against our common enemy. I told them that our people could offer intelligence and reconnaissance assistance, as our enemy would take no notice of humans in such activities whereas they would be detected immediately because of their Ki signatures. We could also be their guides, as apparently none of them had even been to Japan before. I am sure that together we can finally defeat the ancient scourge of our nation."

Tsuruko then gave Motoko another chance to speak, but Motoko was too dumbfounded to respond for the moment.

"There is one more thing that I think you deserve to know," Tsuruko said gravely. "The foreign vampires came to me a short time ago with a piece of intelligence that they'd come up with themselves, seeking to have its significance either confirmed or denied. It seems a certain Naru Narusegawa paid a visit to the headquarters of the local vampire community, which was of course under surveillance, and not knowing what her significance was, they followed her. Now one of the biggest problems that our new allies faced was none other than your friend Keitaro and his vampire companion. Their leadership was intelligent, calculated and above all, very damaging to the foreign vampires. Either eliminating them or somehow breaking up their solid purposefulness quickly became a very high priority. After following Naru back to the Hinata Apartments, they learned that Keitaro had once lived there, but they didn't know how it was still connected to him. That was the information they got from me."

Motoko's jaw dropped. "Y ... you ...?"

"I gave explicit orders that you were not to be harmed, but do not forget that the friend of our enemy is also our enemy," Tsuruko interrupted. "If it is from his friends that Keitaro draws his strength, then that makes them legitimate targets in war. If the reports I've gotten back from our allies since then are to be believed, it would seem that the goal of derailing Keitaro's ability to lead effectively is well on the road to being achieved."

Motoko was absolutely thunderstruck now, a dark fury building up within her, and she could barely think straight, let alone speak. "I ... if you say that vampires or werewolves are monsters, then what makes these foreign vampires any less monstrous than the local population? When you sent them to Hinata, they killed Mutsumi Otohime and they burned the apartments to the ground! That's the most monstrous thing that _I've_ ever seen!" Motoko sputtered.

"One death against many," Tsuruko replied bluntly. "These foreign vampires have never wronged either our ancestors nor any of our countrymen, and they could assist us in avenging thousands of our kinfolk. If Keitaro was not a friend of yours, I doubt very much that you'd have a problem with this."

"Well Keitaro is my friend," hissed Motoko through clenched teeth. "Mutsumi was my friend too. And the Hinata apartments were home to us all."

Motoko found her hands automatically drawing her sword and sending the sharp edge whistling towards her sister.

"How could you _do_ something so horriAAAG!" In her anger, Motoko's strike was too sloppy to surprise Tsuruko, who passed Motoko's arm over her head and then grabbed her wrist, twisting it around and disarming her. Tsuruko sprung to her feet at the same time and stepped up onto the table, forcing Motoko to double back on her knees and pinning her in place.

"I am truly sorry, Motoko, that you have been caught up in this messy affair in this way," Tsuruko said as she stood over Motoko. "But you'll have to forgive me if the lives of our ancestors mean more to me than your friendships. One day I hope you will understand that. But for now, I cannot allow you to either get yourself killed nor interfere in this affair any further."

With her free hand, Tsuruko reached into a pouch tied to her obi and pulled out a marble-sized medicine ball wrapped up in a piece of rice paper. Popping the ball in her hand to reveal a quantity of yellowish-white powder, she blew a puff of the powder into Motoko's face, applying an increase in pressure onto Motoko's wrist at the same time. This caused Motoko's mouth, which had been clenched shut in anger, to involuntarily open as she sharply inhaled against the pain. This in turn meant that she breathed in the full dose of Tsuruko's drug. She had only just enough time to recognize the effects of the Aoyama clan's traditional sleeping powder before her senses began to fade out, and within 5 seconds her world went completely black.


	42. The Endgame Begins?

The Aoyama sleeping powder was formulated to make its incapacitating effects as short-lived as possible once the subject woke up. As Motoko began to come around, she wasn't much groggier than she would be if she was waking up from a normal night's sleep. She quickly realized that she was inside another of the dojo's guest cabins. She had been placed in the bed, and as she slowly rolled herself out of it and onto her feet, her situation immediately made itself clear. It was still light outside, so she couldn't have been asleep for too terribly long. All of her belongings sans her weapons had been placed in the room with her, and throughout the small cabin there were several stacks of food and drink, personal supplies, and books. A small television with a DVD player and a small selection of movies had been left for her as well, and a mini-fridge, a rice cooker, and small portable cooking stove sat in the corner. In the small closet, there were several fresh sets of clothes. But the most obvious signs that she was now Tsuruko's prisoner were the heavy wire mesh that had been strung outside all the windows and the fact that the door had been locked from the outside.

Still a little too groggy to think too hard about the present circumstances, Motoko just sighed. She went back to the bed and lay down on it. Things would be much easier to sort out once her head cleared.

* * *

There was no wake-up call or messenger to disrupt the sleep of the tired soldiers, only messages instructing all officers to check in with Rikyo or Gennai once they were up. Kanako woke up first, roughly an hour after sundown. Sitting up on her bedroll, she could see Keitaro was still sleeping soundly, though his face still looked exhausted despite it. As quietly as she could, Kanako began to roll up her bedding. When she had finished that, she grabbed a set of fresh clothes out of her bag, and even though Keitaro was still asleep, Kanako ducked into the bathroom to change.

Kanako let Keitaro sleep for another hour after she was ready before she began to think that their presence would be missed. She gently tugged on his arm.

"Keitaro? Hey, Keitaro? We should really be checking in with the bosses soon. It's well after moonrise."

Keitaro slowly stirred as Kanako spoke. After a moment he opened his eyes and sat up.

"It's already after moonrise?" He mumbled sleepily as he shook his head a few times to help get his bearings. "Damn, feels like I just went to bed."

"Well, for what it's worth, you actually slept for about nine hours," Kanako replied with a small smile. "But it would be pretty embarrassing if Rikyo or Gennai had to come over here and drag you out of bed, so I think we should bust a move here pretty quick like."

Keitaro neither looked nor felt like he had slept as much as he had, but Kanako's reasoning still made sense to him. With a yawn he swung himself out of bed. Walking slowly over to the small dresser, he collected a change of clothes from it and took them into the bathroom. It didn't take him long to change, and once he was ready, the two of them went together to the C&C building.

* * *

As Kanako expected, they were the last to check in. Eizo was on hand, as was Gennai, but most of the junior officers and Rikyo were out and about. However, their tardiness was of no consequence, as no course of action had been agreed upon yet. It was recognized, of course, that time was still of the essence, but for the moment allowing everyone all the sleep they wanted seemed reasonable. Now that all were present and accounted for, the word went out for all officers to reconvene, and within 20 minutes everyone was back in the conference hall.

Prisoners were considered more valuable now than they had been thought in the recent past, and although he had not asked to be involved, Rikyo had left specific orders with the detention officer that neither Keitaro nor Kanako were to be given access to the prisoners. In one respect this was extremely beneficial to them, as the interrogations had ran all through the day. It was with the results of that interrogation that Rikyo and Gennai reopened the meeting with.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you all got caught up on rest," began Rikyo. "Be especially thankful to our combined interrogation staff, for they are only just now being granted that opportunity after a full day on the job."

A short round of sympathetic nods went around the room.

"But their toils were not in vain, for now we have a much clearer picture of the situation before us than we did last night. With regards to the absence of the bulk of the invading vampires' strength from their former base of operations, it seems neither of our theories were correct, but rather pieces of a somewhat different reality, and one that I dare say leaves us in a much better position."

Rikyo could not help but let a self-satisfied smile break across his face as he continued. "Not surprisingly, the powers that be for our uninvited guests have been most displeased with the performance of their would-be conquerers. It seems this whole war was the brainchild of a few vampiric princes on the Asian and European mainland who thought that we would make easy feathers in their caps with which to improve their own standings at home. Apparently these princes first sent small scouting groups to Japan from their own ranks to test the waters and didn't even make mention of their plans to their elders until those scouts who made it back reported very stiff resistance. These princes quickly decided that they would be unable to defeat us on their own, so it was then that they went to their elders with the story that they had uncovered a plan by some evil alliance of long-dormant Lycans and vampires to begin a systematic campaign against their holdings within the next decade or so. Their elders were skeptical, but the princes kept people in Japan all the while, concocting more stories, fabricating evidence, inventing threats, and generally doing whatever they could to persuade the elders that we presented a terrible danger to their interests. I'm sure you all can remember the roughly two years that passed without any sign of these foreign vampires after their first contact – it seems our adversaries' skills of persuasion are closely comparable to their skills of invasion, but eventually they were able to convince their elders both of the threat we posed and their own tactical ability to deal with us ... with the generous support from the elders of course. The rest is history. They thought themselves so clever for thinking to attempt to capture our leadership right off the bat to learn of our defensive capabilities. Despite the total failure of that bright idea, they then decided that it would be a great idea to mount a full-scale, frontal assault on this island. It seems our overseas counterparts are in the midst of a Lycan/vampire conflict, and it was thought that by knocking us out of the battle right off, perhaps they could reach a negotiated settlement with Gennai and company here."

Gennai cracked a slight grin out of the corner of his mouth with a huff. "Kinda makes you mad, doesn't it? Their assumption that we'd want anything to do with a breed of moronic self-defeating incompetents such as theirs, particularly after they'd already picked a fight with us too," he said, addressing the other vampires in the room. "Ah well, what's done is done I suppose. But we learned more from our captives than just ancient history."

Gennai also openly showed his satisfaction now as well. "The remains of the first expeditionary force from the mainland did indeed request reinforcements shortly after we stuffed their first major attack plan into a sack. Given the losses they had sustained then, the elders were hesitant to sacrifice any more of their cash and manpower without any evidence that the invasion was still viable for them. It was this motivation that drove them to lure us into an attack on a well-prepared trap, figuring for once correctly that we might be a little high on ourselves after our initial success. A lesson learned for us. However, the foreign vampires did indeed take considerable losses that night, even with all the advantages in their court. Unimpressed and angry at the waste of resources for no gain whatsoever, the foreign elders flat-out refused to send any reinforcements of any kind and threatened draconian punishments on the offending princes for their failure, ordering them to disperse what remained of their forces here and lay low for the time being while they decide for themselves if we have proven to be more trouble than we're worth."

The mood was quickly rising in the room. Everyone had expected the situation to be far worse than it was, and no one would have dared to guess that not only was their enemy on the brink of defeat, but they had freely surrendered the initiative and were without support or encouragement from their own homelands. Looks and words of surprise and excitement were passed around.

"However, we are still left with a problem," Rikyo picked up. "However unlikely it seems now, it remains a possibility that we must contend with that these pompous princes will somehow convinced their elders to continue the war. More significantly, these princes may not want to just throw in the towel and submit themselves to the wrath of their elders should they be ordered to return home. We could be facing an indefinite guerrilla battle if the princes would rather defy their elders and make their own future here. This is also highly unlikely, but we must likewise consider the possibility that the foreign vampires could achieve some success against us, which could then rekindle the support of their elders and the whole cycle could start all over again."

Rikyo looked over at Gennai, who took the torch again. "We must hunt down the survivors of the invasion force and wipe them out. No prisoners, no mercy. We must move swiftly and efficiently and leave these foreign elders with no doubt whatsoever that to continue to support the war against us would be a grossly unprofitable venture. The hunt must begin immediately."

Gennai turned his gaze to Kanako. "Given the arrogance that these foreign vampires have shown in the past, I doubt that they will be inclined to survive on animal blood even when they're supposed to be laying low. I want all blood banks, donation locations and hospitals placed under high surveillance. I would like for you to take charge of that, Kanako. Please make sure that blood stocks are carefully monitored and that any vampires who show up asking for blood can satisfactorily identify themselves. Let's also keep a squad of troopers at the most important locations. And be sure to monitor police and news sources for any word of disappearing humans too, just in case these foreign vampires are even dumber than we think."

Kanako nodded, and Rikyo looked at Kanako too. "No doubt that no one can track down vampires better than other vampires. If any of my people can be of assistance, please take with you whomever you need."

Rikyo then turned to Keitaro. "I would like for you to organize whoever is left after the hunting parties have been formed into as many quick response teams as you feel can be made while leaving each team with enough manpower to handle any likely scenario. Please consult with Kanako to figure out the best places to post the teams – close enough to the hunters to be of quick assistance, but far enough away to expand our reach a bit should the teams themselves come across anything of consequence. Eizo has already taken everything he needs to ensure the safety of this island, so anyone or anything you can find is at your disposal."

Keitaro also nodded his acknowledgment. Rikyo and Gennai took in the reactions of the others in the room for a moment before the Lycan ruler had one more thing to say.

"When anyone encounters one of these foreign vampires, try to get anything you can about the hiding places of any of their comrades out of them before you finish them off. They have to be keeping in touch somehow, and there may even be some organization to their retreat. Anything we can learn that will hasten our task will be well worthwhile. Understood?"

All nods around the room.

"Good. Meeting adjourned. Let's get to work."

Keitaro and Kanako exchanged glances as they and everyone else stood up, and then they walked silently out the door together.

* * *

Motoko ended up drifting back off to sleep for a short while, waking up for good just as the sun was setting. She immediately felt much better, as the drug seemed to have completely worn off. She started to get out of bed quickly, until she remembered that moving quickly or not, there was very little she could do at the moment. Indeed, her first action after sitting up on the bed for a moment was to thump herself on the forehead ... hard.

"_Just like old times ... acting out without thinking," _Motoko thought angrily to herself, thinking of her poorly thought-out and executed attack on Tsuruko that had landed her where she was. _"Once again I have paid a high price for the reactionism that I thought was behind me. Now I'm stuck in here and everyone out there is getting sucker-punched by an enemy they don't even know they have. Shit ... what do I do now?"_

As she pondered this question, the became aware of the grumbling from her stomach, remembering then that she had not even had breakfast this morning. _"Well ... it's a place to start."_

Hauling herself out of the bed, she made her way to the stacks of food, finding herself some rice. Getting the rice started, she took some dried meat and an orange and set those aside. She also found a box of green tea, and steeped herself a cup of it. As she sat waiting for the rice to finish cooking, she kept thinking.

"_I've got to get out of here somehow," _she thought. _"I've got to stop Tsuruko and warn Haruka. If Tsuruko's people find them at the new place, they could all be in grave danger. I just wish there was a way to warn Keitaro. His people are probably not on the lookout for ordinary humans. He could be in danger too."_

She closed her eyes and her face contorted with frustration. _"How am I going to do this? Tsuruko knows me far too well. Anything I readily think of she has probably already taken into account. This is going to require some unconventional thinking on my part ..."_

In a short while, her rice was ready, and even before she had finished eating she felt her strength returning. After rinsing out her bowl and cup in the sink, Motoko drew herself a bath and shed the clothes she'd been wearing since the morning. As it always did, the warm water relaxed her and helped her head clear a great deal. She stayed in the tub for several hours, just thinking.

Having slept for most of the day, albeit chemically-induced, Motoko had a very hard time sleeping that night. After her bath she thoroughly searched her cabin from top to bottom, looking for any possible way out that Tsuruko had overlooked, or anything at all that could be of use to her. Tsuruko had clearly expected from the beginning that she would have to detain Motoko against her will, as it was unlikely that this cabin could have been so prepared for her detention in the hours that she had been conked by the sleeping drug. These guest cabins were designed to be very well ventilated, but even though a grown woman of Motoko's dimensions would have been hard pressed to squeeze through any of the vents even if it was greased, they had all been covered with the same heavy wire mesh that barred the windows. Because the cabin was so small there was not a lot of space in between the thick support timbers and the drywall, but it was potentially enough for Motoko to get through. But through the arm-sized hole she put through the drywall to test the theory, she quickly discovered that even this potential exit had been solidly reinforced from the outside. Great care had also been taken to leave nothing in the cabin that was terribly useful either as weapons nor escape instruments. What cooking utensils she had were made from soft wood. Of course all the ornamental weapons that usually decorated the cabins had been removed, and pretty much anything metal that wasn't bolted down or too large or so shaped as to be beyond modification into a weapon was gone too. But if Tsuruko intended to keep her prisoner for any length of time, someone would be coming by sooner or later. The supplies left for her in the cabin might last a week, but no longer. It seemed unlikely that after all the obvious trouble that Tsuruko had gone to to make her as comfortable as possible that she intended to leave her to rot on the vine. Then again, no doubt with all her preparations to prevent her from escaping that Tsuruko would also realize that these logistical visits would be the best opportunity for her sister to escape. Tsuruko would likely either deal with her herself or make sure that whomever took on that responsibility could handle things. Motoko was unarmed and would probably be outnumbered by Tsuruko's advanced students whose skills were comparable to her own. She would have to find a way to beat the odds if she was going to get out of this on her own terms. Centering her thoughts, she began to brainstorm.

* * *

After a quick meeting in Kanako's cabin in which they agreed upon a time to meet up again after Kanako had time to get a list of all the places they needed to watch and Keitaro had a list of resources for his hunter-killer groups, Keitaro and Kanako went their separate ways. Keitaro went and found Eizo, from whom he got a final list of all equipment and personnel that were being held back for defensive use, and then went to the C&C building where he sent out for every last Lycan on the island who was not on that list. He ordered all of them to pack up their equipment and remain in the mess hall, as deployment would begin just as soon as he and Kanako rationed them out based on the number, location and importance of the sites she had identified. He helped with the logistical preparations until he had to catch up with Kanako, and then met her back in her cabin.

"Well, we'll be spread a bit thin, but it given the fighting ability of our people I think it will work," Kanako said, as they were comparing the lists of manpower and the sites they were supposed to cover. "Put a small detachment at these five primary hospitals and stick the other teams at even points between the others and we'll be as ready as we'll ever be."

Kanako drew dots on the large quilted map of Japan that she'd printed out, taped together and laid out across the bed as she spoke.

"If the foreign vampires are trying to stay out of sight, I can't imagine that they'll be in groups too large for our teams to take care of," Keitaro added in agreement. "And if after the first few battles they decide to operate in larger groups, they'll just make themselves that much easier to track down."

Kanako looked up from the map to give Keitaro a sly grin. "I'm glad we're not fighting foreign Lycans. They'd have no problem ducking away and living off the land for a while. Tell an aristocratic vampire – or just about any vampire for that matter - that he has to sleep in the trees and drink rabbit blood and he'll just laugh at you."

Keitaro didn't seem to catch her attempt at humor and just responded to her statement matter-of-factly. "What do you guys drink on a day to day basis, anyway? I'm guessing you're not supposed to attack humans ..."

Kanako shook her head. "No, we're not, but we still consume a lot of human blood. Some of us work in these hospitals and blood banks, and we siphon off quite a bit of the donations for our own use under various false fronts. That's why Gennai is having us stake these places out. There are even the odd few humans who seem to derive some bizarre sexual gratification from feeding vampires. But we still have to make do with a high proportion of livestock blood, there's just no way around that reality. Some of us have taken to mixing human and animal blood or blood from various animals to try and spice things up a bit. Then there are those who for the same reason have tried things like boiling, steaming, freezing and carbonizing all types of blood. Personally I find almost all such cocktails to be utterly revolting, but to each their own."

"So human blood tastes best to most vampires?"

Kanako opened her mouth to answer, but retracted her ready response before she said it. "I guess it figures that you've never eaten a human before," she said instead.

Keitaro got a half-disgusted, half horrified look on his face. "Of course not!" He replied with a huff, another few seconds passing before he caught the hidden implication of Kanako's words. "Please tell me that you haven't ..."

She shrugged her shoulders. "Well I haven't eaten the flesh, of course, but I have killed humans for their blood before."

Kanako watched a flurry of different emotions flicker across Keitaro's face, all of them unpleasant.

"If it makes you feel any better, they were all criminals," she said. "Would-be muggers, kidnappers, rapists, whatever, who took a petite girl like me for an easy target. While no vampire is supposed to kill humans, Gennai has always been willing to look the other way if it would be considered self-defense under human law. Even compared to donated stocks there is just nothing quite like hot human blood straight from the veins, and I will confess to using myself as bait from time to time in bad parts of town when I'm really in the mood."

Keitaro was still at a loss for words, and Kanako could see that he was not taking this news too well. She was not about to apologize for anything, but she didn't want to leave things as they were. She put her hand on his shoulder.

"The natural world is full of predator-prey relationships. You and I, my friend, are predators. Lycans may be omnivorous, but vampires are not, and regardless of the source, we only have one real choice when mealtime comes around. Could you fathom an eternity of eating nothing but instant ramen and cereal?"

Keitaro had to honestly shake his head.

"Well that's what animal blood is like to a vampire. Human blood out of a donation bag is a very decent meal to be sure, but it's essentially our equivalent of leftovers. Fresh human that you've taken yourself is to me what a gourmet meal from the finest restaurant in Japan would be to you."

There wasn't much of a change in Keitaro's reaction, so Kanako thought that it would be a good idea to drop the subject and get back to work.

"You'd have to be a vampire to fully understand what I'm talking about. But anyway, we digress, I didn't mean to completely knock us off course. Shall we get back to business?"

Keitaro nodded softly and then visibly tried to shake off what Kanako had just told him, turning his gaze back to the map.

It did not take long for teams to be organized based on Kanako's information. In less than an hour the first Lycan hunter-killer teams and Gennai's stakeout vampires were arriving at their designated stations, and Keitaro and Kanako themselves deployed to the largest blood bank. As any of Gennai's vampires who had been at work at any of these locations had been recalled after the ambushed attack on the enemy headquarters, the hospitals and blood banks had been briefly unattended, and even before everyone had reached their posts evidence was coming to Keitaro and Kanako's attention that some of the foreign vampires were already using these banks for food. Conflict would not be long in coming.


	43. The Second Hunt

The first skirmish took place that very night. It happened outside a mobile blood donation vehicle which had been parked for the night outside a closed department store. Courtesy of Kanako's suggestion, the two Japanese vampires posing as blood workers there wore brown eye contacts and had all of their exposed flesh colored up a bit so that they looked perfectly human. Special dental prosthetics of Kanako's design cleverly reduced the contrast between vampiric canines and the other teeth in their mouths to buy a little extra camouflage. Combined with their ability to contain their immortal Ki energies, these disguises served them well when three foreign vampires showed up. The foreign vampires were dressed in uniforms that had been stolen from the blood bank that operated this particular collection vehicle, and they posed themselves as angry supervisors. Weaving a short tirade about improper blood storage practices, they ordered the undercover vampires to go home and said that they had come to take over and straighten things out. Kanako's efforts proved very effective indeed, and the first sign to the enemy that they were in trouble was when one of the mere human blood workers produced a wakizashi from under his lab coat and cleanly cut off the head of the first foreign vampire to shove past him. Before the severed head even hit the ground, the second defender had already put a three-round burst of incendiary bullets from his suppressed submachine gun into one of the remaining enemy vampires. The third meal seeker was the only one of the three to have the time for a look of frightened astonishment to cross his face, but before he could produce a weapon of his own, the sword wielder rounded on him and severed his right arm about halfway up past the elbow. The foreign vampire only got out half a scream before his mouth was plugged with gauze, and he was very roughly dragged into the collection vehicle.

True to their orders, the stakeout vampires vigorously, and rather literally, squeezed their captive for information as they slowly finished him off. While this impromptu interrogation didn't turn up any instant game-winning secrets, it did confirm the suspicion that the scattered enemy forces were keeping in touch with one another – or more specifically, with just a few centralized officers. Most of the information gleamed earlier from the prisoners taken during the last anticlimactic battle was seconded too. All three of them had cell phones on them, with the same four phone numbers loaded on speed dial, but no other clues were found on the bodies of the dead vampires. With what they had, they contacted Kanako, who gave them permission to leave their post so that they might bring her the cell phones. Unfortunately they could not take the collection vehicle to Kanako because the blood bank to which it belonged was not in any way associated with the hospital where Kanako was and taking it there would raise too much suspicion, so they would have to move on foot. Their location was also far enough away from where Kanako and Keitaro were that the stakeouts would probably not be able to meet with Kanako and get back before sunrise, so she also ordered them bring as much of the blood stock with them as they could reasonably carry and dispose of the rest. After doing that and burying the bodies of the foreign vampires in the large garbage dumpster in the back of the building, they made a beeline for the nearest train station, doing their best to look like they were carrying several cases of donated blood for some sort of urgent medical business.

* * *

There was to be no further action that night. The cell phones were delivered to Kanako with no problems, and she immediately contacted Gennai and Rikyo with the numbers listed therein. They, in turn, passed the numbers on to the intelligence team, who set about finding a way to eavesdrop on any calls made to or from those numbers, using test calls from the captured phones to identify the wireless network being used and to calibrate tracing equipment. Just before dawn all of Gennai's vampires took shelter from the coming daylight and the daywatch took over, Lycans substituting for vampires at mobile locations or anywhere where vampires could not be secure from the sun.

* * *

The next week was a period of irritating frustration for Keitaro, Kanako, and the rest of their respective peoples. In 7 nights, there were only 4 more contacts made with the foreign vampires. In 3 of the 4 cases, there were only two enemy vampires involved, and in the forth, a total of 3. 4 more prisoners had been taken, but little new information was gleamed from them, and the captured cell phones contained no new numbers. The only potentially useful fact they'd learned in that time is that the hiding foreign vampires were only given cell phones so that they might be recalled or called back into action immediately depending on the final decision from across the sea. On the off-chance that their Japanese adversaries might have some electronic intelligence capability, they were not supposed to call one another with the phones, nor call their officers unless they had something of the utmost importance to say. While this did force the consideration that any information that might be obtained from intercepted calls might not be genuine, it also meant that, provided there were no survivors from any small group of enemy vampires caught at the blood banks to give the game away, none of the invaders that they killed would be missed, and their leaders would be ignorant to the erosion of their ranks. Gennai and Rikyo's intelligence teams were confident that they would be able to tap into any phone calls going to or coming out from the phone numbers they'd collected, but if there had been any such wireless activity it had not been detected.

* * *

As had been the case ever since Mutsumi's death, Keitaro's emotional temperament, or more accurately, his emotional stability, had been on a constant peak-and-valley track during that week. His spirits would rise briefly when the news of contact reached him, then plummet when no useful information was taken. The fact that he himself was seeing no action and was just sitting the time away at a hospital really ground his nerves away between two sheets of coarse psychological sandpaper too. Indeed, as he and Kanako met up again on the eighth night in one of the large hospital's cafeterias, Kanako was already feeling very uneasy. It was hard for them or any of their teammates to achieve privacy from human eyes, and several times in the past week Keitaro had gotten so angry with things that he had had to expend massive effort to prevent his anger from triggering a shift of form. On most of those occasions, while Keitaro was able to stop himself from completely shifting into wolf form, his eyes still turned grey and his teeth and even his fingernails took enough of their form for a few moments to cause a major incident should any of the many humans about have seen him. Only dumb luck had seen the immortals through. Although they still didn't know why, those Lycans and vampires who had been working with Keitaro directly had long since come to realize that something was driving their leader insane, and while they continued to like him personally and have great regard for his leadership abilities when he was thinking clearly, they had come to recognize that his bouts of fury crippled his usually reasonable and even-tempered nature and provoked thoughts and intentions of recklessness that only Kanako's careful intervention had halted before they could be enacted. Just as a level-headed Keitaro was very good for morale, when Keitaro's mood faltered, it made his underlings nervous.

"Good evening, Keitaro," Kanako said softly, as she sat down across from him and pushed an offering of tea across the table. She could see that his face was slightly pale, the result of his poor sleep during the day. He slowly accepted the tea with a slight nod and raised the mug to his lips. A few good swigs of the tea seemed help him a little, and he looked up at Kanako as he set the mug down again.

A few members of the Lycan hunter/killer team stationed with them came into the room just then, a customary checking in at the beginning of the night routine that they had all quickly settled into. A brief exchange of words between them and Keitaro revealed no new information or orders, and the teammates left the room again to rejoin their teammates who were spread out through the hospital grounds. When they had gone, Keitaro redirected his attention to Kanako.

"Thanks, by the way," he said, as he tipped his tea mug in her direction before taking another swig.

"Don't mention it," she said with a small smile. "Stuff's of no use to me anyway."

Kanako stood up and walked over to the counter where there was a stack of mugs next to a coffee machine. Taking one for herself, she pulled a small thermos out from under her cloak. She sat back down across from Keitaro and poured the crimson liquid from the thermos into the mug.

Cracking the faintest of smiles, Keitaro raised his mug. "To a better night."

Kanako met his mug with her own with a quiet clang. "I'm in on that," she replied, and then they each took a drink.

* * *

By 'a better night,' Keitaro was thinking either of a major, large scale victory, or on the more immediately gratifying scale, to at least see some combat himself. Through his toast with Kanako he started the night in higher spirits than he had since the beginning of the week, that quickly dissipated as the hours rolled off the clock without anything terribly significant happening. With only a couple of hours left until sunrise, there had only been one further contact with the enemy. The total bag of enemy vampires from this contact was only three, and the incident was not very close to Keitaro's location. By this time Keitaro's anxiety had progressed to the point where it was making him feel physically ill. Kanako found herself at a loss for anything to do to help him and so only said anything when a report would come in or Rikyo or Gennai called them for updates.

Keitaro and Kanako we sitting side by side on a couch in the lobby outside the blood bank section of the hospital when Kanako's cell phone rang. Despite the interruption of the silence neither of them started. All the stakeout teams were supposed to check in several times a night, and both assumed it was just another "nothing going on here" coming in from ... wherever.

"Kanako here," Kanako answered.

"_Kanako! This is Stakeout Unit 25 at Yokohama! We've got a situation here!"_

Kanako quickly snapped to attention, and Keitaro, who was able to overhear what was being said, perked up as well.

"What's going on?" Kanako asked.

"_There are at least 5 foreign vampires here right now, but they're trying to get enough blood to feed at least a couple dozen! Our Hunter/Killer team is one site and ready to rumble, but we've got some people yanking the GPS locators out of ambulances right now! We can't stall for very much longer and the human situation here is not optimal right now for starting a fight, but if we slip those GPS locators into the blood cases, we can track them! What do you want us to do?"_

Kanako and Keitaro looked at each other, then Kanako answered.

"Good work, 25. Make a stink of it and drag it out as long as you can but give them all the blood they've asked for. Plant the GPS locators and send the tracking codes to Rikyo and Gennai. Send the enemy on their way and stand by for further orders."

"_Yes mam, at once!"_

Kanako closed down her phone and again locked eyes with Keitaro.

"We should get there as fast as we can," Keitaro said quickly, his fast-rising energy reflected quite clearly in his voice.

Kanako nodded. "Agreed. Let's take half of our own H/K group with us too. Ready to move out in 10 minutes?"

"Easy."

They quickly jumped to their feet and made a beeline for the door, Keitaro dialing up the commander of their resident H/K team as they went. When the commander answered his phone Keitaro told him to immediately assemble half his Lycans and meet them in the front parking lot. The group was on short-notice readiness as it was, and so by the time Keitaro and Kanako had stopped by the lockers to gather their own gear the last few teammates were arriving at the meeting spot at the same time they were. Two of Gennai's black SUVs were there, and pulling the commander aside to explain the situation to him and to inform him that he was now in command of this location, Keitaro ordered the troopers to load up into the vehicles. Just under ten minutes from the time Kanako had first received the call, they were down the road and on their way.

* * *

The cases of blood had been tracked to a hotel in an old fishing area of Yokohama harbor. It was close enough to the hospital where they had gotten the blood that Keitaro, Kanako and company met up with the resident team in the hospital parking lot. They were completely loaded into their own vehicles by the time of the rendezvous and there wasn't much else to do but make their way to the hotel. The short drive passed very quickly for everyone.

The hotel was medium sized, but if there were in fact a few dozen vampires there then they must by occupying a sizable portion of the place. It was in the open, with a parking lot on all sides and no other buildings, trees or other obstructions to conceal their approach, and so the group split into two groups. Roughly half of them went straight into the front door, while the other half stayed in the SUVs and parked them on all sides of the building, ready to catch any enemy vampires who attempted to escape. Keitaro and Kanako were among the group that went in the front door. Kanako used tranquilizer darts to incapacitate the three hotel staff in the front room, other team members carrying the drugged humans to a nearby room after being satisfied that no one had seen the act and leaving them in there. Breaking into the guest records, they confirmed that there had indeed been 38 guests checking in all at the same time 6 days earlier. None of them used Japanese names and all of them were holding their rooms 'indefinitely.' However, there were also 25 other guests in the hotel at the moment. They all had Japanese names, and had been staying at the hotel for varying lengths of time, but Keitaro and Kanako quickly agreed that all the rooms should be checked. Digging through the keys taken from the employees, they found the key to the supply room and managed to find 8 housekeeping and maintenance uniforms. Keitaro and Kanako each took a uniform, and the 8 disguised hunters were given the best suppressed weapons that the combined groups possessed. They split into pairs, and started with the first floor rooms.

* * *

The attack went very well initially. As it was nearly sunrise, most of the foreign vampires were getting ready for bed, conveniently broken up never more than four to a room. The bottom floor was quickly cleared out with no trouble at all. As each room was reached, two of the hunters wearing a hotel uniform would quietly knock on the door and say something about a minor electrical problem that needed to be checked for, with four of their teammates without uniforms in full battle armor standing by to the side of the door and beyond eyeshot of the peephole. If there was no answer at all, they would use the keys taken from the front desk to open the door themselves. All the rooms had to be checked, and in the case where it was humans in the room, none of them were awake, and the hunters would leave the room. In the case of the foreign vampires, who were almost invariably awake, the 'annoying human hotel staff' would be told to go away in varying levels of rudeness. A small stomp, a noise from a cell phone, or other such sound produced from the backup teammates would cover the uniformed teammate's use of the key to open the door. As the two uniformed hunters entered the room despite the order of their enemy to leave them alone, the foreign vampires in the room would quickly approach them in a very menacing fashion with the intent of being a little more forceful about their request for privacy. Expecting mere humans, the foreign vampires were taken by surprise when their quarry responded with menace of their own, in the form of large-caliber incendiary bullets from suppressed handguns and dismemberment and decapitation from a wakizashi blade. Because of this element of surprise it was rarely necessary for the backup to get involved at all, and the operation proceeded with deadly efficiency.

* * *

The shedding of his enemies' blood was providing Keitaro with some badly needed satisfaction, filled him with energy and dramatically improved his mood. However morbid the reason, he was already feeling better than he had in almost two weeks. He and Kanako led the way to the third floor after finishing off the last foreign vampires on the second floor. They checked a few human-occupied rooms before reaching one occupied by likely vampiric suspects.

* * *

Just outside the door, Keitaro turned to Kanako with an energetic but dark grin. "First and second second bases secured. We clear third base and the ball game is ours. You ready?"

Kanako smiled back at him and lowered her eyes into a dangerous glare towards the door. "Your turn to pitch. Your batter is ready," she said, pulling her pistol out from under her uniform jacket just enough for him to see it.

His grin growing a little wider, he knocked softly on the door. "Hotel maintenance, is anyone awake?" He said in his best gentlemanly voice.

"What do you want?" Came a gruff voice from within the room.

Keitaro visibly, though not audibly, contained a chuckle, and he shot Kanako a playful evil eye.

"We need to inspect your carpeting, we have reason to believe your room may be infested with blood-sucking parasites."

Kanako most definitely returned his evil eye, though with a unsuccessful attempt to keep the playfulness out of it, as she sharply jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. Keitaro recoiled slightly and Kanako's elbow forced a quiet chuckle out of his lungs.

"What the hell? Do you know what time it is? Go away!" Came the gruff voice turned irate from within the room.

Using his own voice to cover the noise of the electric lock being deactivated by the key, Keitaro winked at Kanako and turned the door handle. Kanako quickly opened the door and stepped inside the doorway, followed immediately by Keitaro.

A quick focus of perception on the angry looking man coming to meet them confirmed the fact that he was a vampire, and before the look of anger on his face could completely change over to one of surprise, Kanako had drawn her pistol and drilled his forehead with a triple tap of incendiary rounds. Keitaro whizzed past her and into the room, counting in quick succession the three other startled foreign vampires in the room. These three vampires appeared to have been cleaning and servicing their firearms before bed, and as such there were several reassembled and loaded weapons amongst the cleaning kits. Kanako was hard on Keitaro's heels and gunned down the enemy vampire farthest from the both of them as he attempted to wield the shotgun he'd been working on against them. None of the guns possessed by the foreign vampires wore suppressors, and not wanting them to get off a noisy gunshot which would could quickly change the situation from a quick and easy assassination mission into a full-fledged battle in a public, populated place, both Keitaro and Kanako lunged forward to disarm their two remaining enemies lest one of them manage to get off a dying shot.

Both the remaining foreign vampires were somewhat larger than their Japanese opponents, but this was compensated for by their lesser fighting skills. Keitaro knocked his enemy's pistol from his hand, though the vampire in turn did manage to separate Keitaro from his wakizashi. A wrestling match ensued, though it was to remain a stalemate only for a few seconds. As they struggled, something familiar caught Keitaro's eye.

It had been carved into a skull from its original shape of a flower, but the design and material was unmistakable. It was the remains of a swirled gold and platinum pendant that Keitaro had given to Mutsumi about ten months prior. In its original form it had been attached to a delicate gold plated chain but now a crossbone-looking safety pin attached it to the vampire's jacket. A moment of shock passed through Keitaro, which did not go unnoticed by his adversary. The foreign vampire could easily see that something had split Keitaro's attention and attempted to use the moment to overpower him, but instead found his arms encircled by pulsating, enlarging fingers, out from which talons sprouted to pierce his flesh. The height differential between them was quickly closed and the vampire found himself face to face with the fangs of an enraged Lycan, who wasted no time in driving those fangs through _his_ skull with an unsuppressed snarl of fury.

Kanako had only just gotten the upper hand in her own struggle when this happened. At the loud roar just to the side of them, both vampires quickly jerked their heads towards the sound and muttered a curse, albeit for very different reasons. Keitaro ripped the butchered remnants of his enemy's head from the rest of his body and flung them against the wall, then quickly rounded on Kanako's opponent and leapt at him. The vampire released the grip he had on Kanako and raised his arms in a futile effort to protect himself, and Kanako let go of him as well and only just managed to get clear before Keitaro's bulk and velocity smashed the vampire into the wall. Also at that moment, the four backup teammates, drawn by the noise, barreled into the room.

Kanako looked at them with great urgency. "Plan B, everybody, _now_!" She shouted, referring to the contingency that should anything compromise the stealth of their attack, the backup teams should themselves pair off and assault the nearby rooms known to harbor enemy vampires, capitalizing on the confusion and hopefully completing the mission before those vampires not yet attended to could collect themselves and offer an effective resistance. The four Lycans nodded and turned right back around and fled the room.

Keitaro finished off the second vampire and turned his attention to the sounds coming through the wall from the room next door. That room was another room occupied by foreign vampires, and it was clear from the sound of gunfire that they were already being engaged by two of his backup teammates. This fact was of little interest to Keitaro at that point, and even as Kanako tried to hold him back he shrugged free of her grip and plowed right through the wall as though it were made of rotten cheesecloth. The vampires on the other side already had their hands full and any thought to covering their flank against this type of Lycan entry had been neglected. Keitaro lost no forward momentum and latched his jaws around the neck of another vampire, actually catching a bullet from his teammates in his upper thigh that had been meant for the vampire and had gone low because of the effect his wall-busting entrance had had on his comrade's aim. If Keitaro even noticed his wound, he gave no indication of it, shredding the vampire he held in his grasp while already making for the last foreign vampire still on his feet, though he was already on his way down from the incendiary bullets from the other Lycans before Keitaro actually reached him.

"Keep going! I'll handle things here!" Kanako exclaimed to her teammates, who again quickly acknowledged and carried out the order. Even as they left the room Keitaro seemed to be preparing to disregard the next wall as well, and as Kanako could not off the top of her head recall if this particular room was confirmed as target or not, she was much more determined to stop him this time. As things were, any human who happened to run past seeking to flee the sudden conflagration of violence and catch a glimpse of Keitaro right now could cause all of them some major problems indeed. She had to get him under control, and fast.

Keitaro was only partially self-aware by this point, his rage by now fighting with his conscious self for control. Still, while the latter part of himself was able to recognize Kanako as she jumped in front of him, it was the former part that reacted when she shoved him backwards.

"You need to get aholAAAH!"

Keitaro caught Kanako unprepared with a full force backhand that struck her square in the face and sent her flying out the open door. The dull crunch of shattering bone was quickly outmatched by the crunch of the wood and drywall that buckled as Kanako smashed into the wall on the other side of the hallway. The force of her impact was enough to cause her to bounce out of the body-shaped cavity she'd created and roll over once so that she came to rest on her back.

Those teammates who were still out in the hallway naturally turned towards the noise of Kanako hitting the wall, expecting that it was one of the enemy vampires being expelled it took them a moment to recognize Kanako, not only because she was the last person they expected to see ejected from a room like that but also because her face was damaged enough to throw off recognition for a moment. Her nose was smashed to one side and almost flat against her face. Her left eyeball was lacerated and bled profusely, as did the patches where her skin had been ripped off from the sheer strength of Keitaro's strike. Her left cheekbone was also smashed and her whole face was a mess of blood and debris from the wall. She did not move and made no sound other than that associated with the labored breathing that takes place when one's airway is inundated with fluid, in this case blood. Her injuries were not insignificant even for a vampire, and if she was mortal – or more to the point, _had_ she been mortal – they may very well have been fatal. Her one damaged and one undamaged eye were both two-thirds open and her mouth hung slightly agape in an expression of utter disbelief. The first of three teammates to reach her dragged her out of the line of fire while the other two trained their weapons into the room, only to stump themselves when they saw that Kanako's attacker had been none other than Keitaro himself.

Keitaro's rage was fast being replaced by a sickening horror courtesy of his conscious self that was grasping what he'd just done. His teammates who now confronted him were at a complete loss for either word or action, leaving the next move solely in in his hands. With horror now his dominant emotion, flight was his reaction this time, and in a flash he spun around and leapt out the window, escaping being shot down by the rest of his team outside because a Lycan in wolf form was pretty easily distinguished from a vampire. Hitting the ground running, Keitaro vanished from sight.

Kanako, meanwhile, had been snapped out of her stunned stupor when she gagged on the last of her blood to run down her throat before her ruptured blood vessels healed themselves. Slowly sitting up, she then felt the pain of her healing energy fighting to reshape her mangled face. Instinctively reaching up with her hand, she pulled her nose back out to roughly its proper place and yanked the broken-off pieces of her cheekbone out entirely, grunting against the additional pain this caused her. Within 3 minutes of her having been hit, her eye had healed over completely and all the external wounds were gone too. Her head ached for another minute or two as her internal injuries were also corrected, and her nose and cheek also sent their protests up through Kanako's nerves as the regenerating bone momentarily displaced them. Once she was fully healed, she acknowledged the Lycan who had been covering her the whole time.

"Thanks," she said weakly.

"Don't mention it," was the reply, and both their attentions turned towards the sounds of battle which had moved nearer to the end of the hallway where the last few rooms were being cleared.


	44. Escape

For the past week, Motoko had been able to contain her frustrations by concentrating on gathering information and then developing and fine-tuning her escape and counteraction plan. First thing after waking up on the second day of her captivity, Motoko had taken a much more careful look at everything she had within her cabin, thinking very hard at the less obvious potential uses for everything. Under different circumstances, she would have been pleased by the fact that Tsuruko no longer underestimated her the way she used to and clearly gave her a lot of credit for ingenuity, but right now she found herself missing the days when her sister took her for a pig-headed underachiever. Tsuruko had indeed been very careful about what she gave Motoko – the things left for her were carefully chosen to be of negligible use as weapons or means of escape, and what ideas she could come up with for various items, some other circumstance of the item itself, the other items in the cabin, or the situation as a whole nullified them. It wasn't until she had taken a break from her task to eat that she was given the idea that she decided to go with. Almost by chance, the ingredients she was working with for lunch just happened to fall within her line of sight just as her inner monologue thought that it was taunting her with a 'stupid, sneaky and dishonorable idea.' While her first reaction was to agree with the voice in her head, when she realized how some of her food items could be used to make that stupid, sneaky and dishonorable idea work, she began to question her ethical objections with it.

"_I think it would be more dishonorable to just sit and rot in here when I might have done something to get out and help my friends," _Motoko had thought. _"Besides, Tsuruko's deceptions can hardly be labeled honorable either. Perhaps beating her at her own game could be considered 'poetic justice.'"_

Convincing herself of the acceptability of her plan, she then turned her attentions to the other factors that would have to be managed in order to pull it off successfully. Over the next couple of days, she made it a point to leave the remains of expended supplies in a place where they could be seen from the outside through the windows and left various marks and objects in the vicinity of the door that would tell her if anyone opened it while she was asleep. To give Tsuruko her due credit for thoughtfulness, it quickly became apparent that someone was tending to her in the night, taking out her garbage and refreshing her supplies. She then began feigning sleep at night so that she could find out who was doing this and when. In due course, she saw that she was right about Tsuruko taking care that Motoko could not simply outfight her keepers and escape that way. On three nights over the course of the week, she saw four of Tsuruko's advanced students silently enter her cabin and commence their tending duties. The fact that they moved worked so quietly that they would not have woken her up had she been actually sleeping was testament to their skill, and attempting to directly confront them was definitely not likely to produce good results. All four of them also carried bokkens, and though they worked very quickly, at least one of them kept their eyes on Motoko at all times, with such scrutiny that on one night Motoko feared for a moment that they realized that she wasn't really asleep and she had to be very careful about how she watched them. In the end, though, she got the information she needed. She knew how many people came to her cabin and at roughly what time.

Motoko had then tested the various food items in the roles she had in mind, always taking care to do so in the bathtub with the door closed, just in case of any prying eyes outside. After a little practice she was confident that she could make it all come together. On the seventh and eighth days of her captivity, she made sure there was enough garbage and depleted supply stores to warrant another visit by her keepers, and on the ninth day, she set her plan into motion.

* * *

The four students charged with maintaining Motoko met up in the cafeteria for a cup of tea, as they always did before doing their last duties of the night. They had been carefully chosen by Tsuruko for their particular martial talents, which the elder Aoyama deemed the best matches against those of Motoko should her sister try to fight her way out. Being among Tsuruko's most advanced and trusted students, they they were knowledgeable of the immortal situation, both past and present, and they alone had been fully briefed by Tsuruko as to Motoko's unwitting involvement in the latter case. Thus, they were well aware that any bid for fight or escape by Motoko would be motivated by utmost conviction, however misguided, and that if she managed to catch them off guard, things could get ugly very fast. Tsuruko had given orders that Motoko should not be harmed if at all avoidable, but that the highest priority was to prevent her from escaping, as her getting involved again with the werewolf and his associates with what she now knew could very well get her killed at the hands of their clan's vampiric allies. Thus, Tsuruko had said, if temporarily disabling her is the only way you can stop her, then do so. It was a high-pressure job, then, to do what they did. Though Motoko had been gone from the school so long that none of the four had ever gotten to know her that well, none of them wanted to fight with, let alone possibly injure Motoko. Doing their job quickly and quietly at night while Motoko slept, they quickly decided, was the best way to ensure the safety of all, and the tea session beforehand helped to keep their nerves and attentions well settled.

After tea, they made their way to the cabin where Motoko was being held. First stealthily peering through the window to confirm that Motoko was in fact in bed and apparently asleep was always the first step.

"_She's not in her bed," _whispered the student who'd performed the check on this night.

"_Then we'll come back in an hour, and if she's still not asleep, we'll try again tomorrow," _was the reply from the senior of the four.

A simple enough solution, but as the four students began to turn around, they heard what sounded like a barely audible groan from within the cabin. Stopping in their tracks, they all quickly refocused their attention in that direction. They waited for a few moments to see if the sound would repeat itself. Silence greeted their ears.

"_Check all the windows," _the senior decreed. _"She might be up to something."_

The four students split up, each taking a window on an opposite side of the cabin. About 30 seconds later, they met again at the front.

"_You'd better take a look at this," _said another of the students to the senior, and she led the other three to one side of the cabin.

"_Look."_

The senior student slowly raised her eyes to the level of the window at an off-angle so as to prevent any reflections from them from being readily visible on the inside, but was quickly thinking that her caution was no longer needed.

"_Oh no," _she whispered, more to herself than to anyone else but her sharp-eared companions caught it.

"_What's wrong?" _Asked another student.

The senior turned to all of then. _"Everyone get up to a window and see if you view this differently than I do," _she whispered.

One of her companions stood up to the same window as her senior, while the other two peered through the window at the other end of the wall. But the horrified reactions were the same all around.

There was a ragged hole through two of the wooden planks of the floor, perhaps eight inches wide by twelve inches long. A long, sharp shard of the wood, apparently displaced by the attempting escapee herself, stuck awkwardly out from one side. The wood shard was soaked crimson red, and a few shreds of fabric along with a few grisly specks of flesh clung to the splintered, ragged sides of it. A thick trail of blood led from the hole out of sight in the direction of the bedroom, then back around to the narrow hallway into the bathroom, then out again where it led to the sheltered doorway around the front door. Out from that sheltered doorway also stuck a pair of hakama-clad legs, the left leg of which was facing them and was punctured and torn around mid-thigh. A tourniquet made from a length of bed sheet was wrapped around it, though this too was heavily soaked through with blood, and a puddle of it lay all around the spot on the floor.

The legs sat very still, though as the four students pondered for a moment this unexpected development, the legs moved slightly as though the owner was trying to pull herself forward. At that moment a soft thump was heard by the four students against the front door, and they quickly left the window and went to the door.

"It could be a trick," said one of the students to the senior. "She could still be up to something."

The senior nodded shortly. "That is possible, yes, but it seems equally possible that Motoko was attempting to escape through the floor and badly injured herself on that shard of wood in the process. With that as a possibility, we can't very well just walk away and let her bleed to death, now can we?"

Without waiting for an answer, the senior quickly unlocked the padlock securing the door and slowly pulled it open.

Motoko's limp upper body had been leaning up against the door, and fell out onto the stairs as the door opened. The senior student could not help but let out a small gasp as even in the pale illumination offered by the porch light the sickly pale complexion of Motoko's face was apparent. Her breathing was slow and shallow, her eyes closed, and she said nothing.

The senior student quickly pulled herself together. "You two, go find Tsuruko, now! You, get to the office and call an ambulance!" She barked out to the respective students, who sharply nodded their obedience and made off in the appropriate directions, while the senior gently pulled Motoko out of the doorway to where she could get a better grip on her. Motoko flinched weakly as the senior scooped her hand under her wounded leg, and the student lifted Motoko out of the cabin and softly laid her down on the ground. Once she had settled, Motoko weakly opened her eyes slightly, and the student knelt beside her.

"_Tried ... escape ... failed ..." _she whispered faintly, and tried to chuckle but it broke into a shallow cough instead.

The student just nodded understandingly. "It's alright. Save your strength, help is on the way," she said reassuringly.

Motoko didn't answer, but strained her head slightly in the direction where her other three keepers were fast disappearing into the darkness. After a few more moments, all three of them had gone out of sight behind buildings.

Motoko waited another 20 seconds or so after she could no longer hear the sound of the other three students running off in opposite directions.

"_Hey ..." _she whispered to the senior student.

"Yes?"

"_I'm sorry ..."_

"For what?"

Hardly had the last sound of the senior student's words left her mouth when Motoko brought her right knee hard into the student's back, using the same forward motion to draw the student's bokken out from her obi and bring it back solidly into her head. Out like a light, the student dropped flat on her back, her stunned expression frozen on her face.

Motoko drew herself to her feet swiftly, but then took a moment to breath deeply and circle her arms a few times as she brought herself fully out of the near-meditative state she'd gone into. Fully bringing herself back, she reached down and quickly undid the 'tourniquet' from her left leg, kicking it out and stretching it to restore the full circulation.

* * *

It had indeed been Motoko's blood that had soaked her clothing and decorated the floor in her cabin, but it was not from any injury. Recalling a quick nursing lesson from Kitsune, Motoko had fashioned a needle of sorts - albeit not a hypodermic one - from a bone from one of the fishes she'd been given as food. Tying off her arm, she had pricked herself in the arm with the needle just as though she was giving blood, though she had been forced to carefully bleed herself into a bowl. Carefully maintaining pressure just as Kitsune had shown her, she had collected roughly a pint of her blood before withdrawing the needle and tying down the puncture hole. She was grateful that she'd paid attention to Kitsune's lesson, as despite her medically crude bloodletting she scarcely had a bruise to show for it an hour later, and she ate a bowl of sugary rice afterwards for good measure. She had then diluted her blood with the corn syrup she'd been given for cooking to create the illusion that there was much more of it than there really was. Using the raw mixture to soak her clothing, she had used her cooking stove to slightly darken the remaining, thinned-out mixture for use on the floor, where the background color of the wood and the fact that she would turn out most of the lights when the crucial moment came should still create the effect she desired. Then, after breaking the whole through the floor, a couple of rub-overs on the shard of wood she'd ripped off the bottom of the hole with a piece of her beef added the finishing touch to the setting.

To add one final visual to her deception, she had used a light rubbing of flour and rice starch to hide the color in her visible flesh. Then she had taken up her position against the front door, taking her body and consciousness to a near deep meditation level, leaving herself just enough awareness to hear the sounds of her keepers when they arrived at her door.

The plan had come off perfectly. She had been prepared to face two of her captors, figuring that the senior of the bunch would dispatch one comrade each to call for medical help and retrieve Tsuruko. She was grateful to have only had to face one of her former schoolmates in this way.

But her trials were just beginning. After a minute when she had fully come back to consciousness, Motoko's first priority was to get a warning to Haruka. She could not go to her herself because of the risk of leading any hostile people right to them, so she would have to send her warning through the mail. And her second priority ...

"_One thing at a time, Motoko. One thing at a time," _Motoko thought to herself. Securing her hijacked bokken into her own obi, she quickly made for the shadows and headed for the office. It was he hope that after the student who'd gone there to call an ambulance had done her job and run down to the road to meet it, she could get in there and write a letter of warning for Haruka. She could not simply stick the letter into the dojo's outgoing mail, as it was not inconceivable that Tsuruko might anticipate such a move on her part once her escape was known and the consequences of Tsuruko learning the location of former Hinata residents' new home now would be nothing short of cataclysmic. She'd have to take the letter to the nearby town and mail it there, then make her way back to the dojo. That part at least she expected to be easy – she doubted that Tsuruko would expect Motoko to come _back _to the dojo after breaking out of her confinement.

* * *

The office was empty when Motoko got there. Motoko was spared the step of having to break into it because the student who'd called for the ambulance hadn't thought to lock it again on her way out. Still, she had no way of knowing how much time she had before someone else would come around, so she quickly got into the mail supplies and scribbled out her message.

_Haruka -_

_You all may still be in danger. Tsuruko and the rest of my clan are working for the foreign vampires, and it was Tsuruko herself who gave the game away for us back at Hinata. You must be very vigilant of anyone who seems to be even casually watching or following any of you, and if anyone even gets an inkling that something is amiss, you should all get on the move again immediately._

_I am going to try and put a stop to the madness here. If I succeed, I'll get back to you within the next day or two. If you do not hear from me in that time, it most likely means that I failed, in which case you must heed my warning extra carefully._

_Motoko_

Sealing the envelope, she tucked it into her obi, then fished the key to the armory out from its hiding place behind a wall panel and ducked out of the office. There was still no one else in sight, and there was one more thing she wanted to secure for herself before taking temporary leave. Motoko quickly ran from the office to the armory, still taking great care that she was not seen by anyone who may still be about. Either the last two students had not yet found Tsuruko, or they had not yet gotten back to her cabin and discovered her escape, but whichever the reason, the armory was also still unmanned. She figured correctly that Tsuruko was probably keeping her personal sword with her, but any of the fine blades that were standard issue for the dojo would serve her purpose well enough. Finding one that matched her personal weapon for dimensions, she plucked it off the wall and placed the bokken she'd been carrying in its place. Satisfied, Motoko closed and locked the armory again, and after taking one more careful look around to ensure that she had not yet been seen, she set of through the woods towards the city, taking care to give the beaten pathway a wide berth so as to avoid the student who might still be standing there, waiting for an ambulance.

* * *

Tsuruko and her two students who'd found her shared an expression of surprise when they came back into view of Motoko's cabin and saw only a single crumpled form on the ground and it was immediately apparent by the lack of bloody clothes that it was not Motoko. They had been running, and they did not slow down when they realized that things were not as they had thought. The senior student was still unconscious, and based on the bokken-sized welt on her forehead, Tsuruko figured she'd stay that was for at least another 20 minutes or so. The elder Aoyama noted the absence of the senior student's bokken, and then quietly and gently picked up her fallen apprentice, and turned silently in the direction of the senior's cabin.

"You. Please stay here and inform the paramedics of the misunderstanding. After you do that you are free to go about your business," Tsuruko said to one of the two students at her side.

"Yes mam," the student said, bowing first and then dropping down to sit on her knees.

"And you, please come with me," Tsuruko said to her second student, who likewise bowed her obedience and scurried to catch up with her sensei.

They walked at a relaxed pace, as Tsuruko did not wish to add to the headache that awaited her unconscious student when she awoke by bouncing her around unnecessarily. As they walked, her other student seemed nervous at first, seemingly wondering if Tsuruko disapproved of their handling of the situation and Motoko's subsequent escape. However, after steeling a few glances at Tsuruko's face, she had eased up considerably, and rightly so. Tsuruko was not angry with her or any of Motoko's other keepers, and in fact could not even feel anger towards Motoko. If she felt any anger towards anyone, it was only towards herself.

"_It seems I have underestimated Motoko again," _Tsuruko thought to herself. _"She may have allowed her emotions to get the best of her when I first spoke to her, but I should have realized that locking her up alone would provide her the perfect environment to collect herself and figure out a way to escape. I should have had her training and working with the rest of us and perhaps even bunked her with some other students. At least that way if she was up to something someone would probably have caught on to it. Being in her old routine and among her old partners might also have helped her understand what I'm doing and why better too ..."_

Tsuruko gently placed the senior student into her bed, her other student helping and then pulling the blanket up over her. After that, Tsuruko plunked down in the chair next to the bed, crossed her arms and slumped her head a bit. This action quickly restored her student's nervousness.

"Sensei?"

Tsuruko raised her eyes to see her other student on her knees with head bowed.

"I apologize for our failure. We should have been more cautious. With everything you told us about the situation with Motoko, we should have ..."

Tsuruko shook her head and waved her hand to stop her. "You have nothing to apologize for. Given the situation as you described it to me, I think you all handled the situation very well. I myself would not have anticipated this sort of move on Motoko's part, and had she actually been injured, I most definitely would not have been happy had you let my sister bleed to death while trying to decide if it was all a ruse or not."

The student only seemed partially pacified by Tsuruko's words. Tsuruko forced herself to smile. "If anything, I should apologize to you," she continued, drawing an uncomfortable and surprised expression from her student. "Through bad judgment and a very poor estimation of Motoko's ingenuity on my part, I put you all in a bad position. Considering where this could have gone, Motoko let us off lightly." She nodded her head in the direction of her unconscious student.

Her other student still didn't seem to be at peace with the situation, but Tsuruko didn't know what other comfort to offer. She stood up.

"Well, it's late and we both could use some sleep. You are free to go. Please do not beat yourself up over this, none of you are to blame. Alright?"

"Yes mam," was the reply.

After seeing her student off in the direction of her own cabin, Tsuruko retired to her cabin too. She had grown more irate with herself for what had happened, and although she was greatly worried about Motoko now, she could not help but feel a little proud of her too. It had always made her feel very good inside, both as a sister and as a teacher, anytime Motoko had managed to best her in any contest of wits or martial prowess. It also hadn't occurred to her in the proper time that setting Motoko up with a challenge like this had been the usual setting for those instances. Now, she could tell all her people in the field to keep their eyes open for Motoko as well and repeat her instructions to her vampiric allies that she was not to be harmed under any circumstances, but beyond that, there was little she could do.

* * *

Motoko, meanwhile, had successfully deposited her letter to Haruka in a public mailbox, and had made her way back to a few hundred yards from the outer perimeter of the dojo. It would not be until the next day when she would have the opportunity she needed to make her bid at ending Tsuruko's support for the foreign vampires, and she could obviously not stay the night in the dojo now, so after finding a place that she decided was well concealed by trees and bushes, she used a flattened stone to dig herself a bivouac in the ground, giving it a rough lining of leaves and moss. She then used her sword to cut down thickly-leaved branches from a nearby tree, and using those as a combined blanket/camouflage, she bedded down for the night and sought to snag some sleep before the very important day she envisioned for tomorrow. 


	45. Tsuruko's Choice

The battle had nearly been over anyway by the time Keitaro had lost his cool and compromised the stealth of the mission. As such, the 'Plan B' operation was able to finish annihilating all the foreign vampires at the hotel and there were no fatalities among the friendly forces. However, even those troops on the scene who were not aware of what had happened to Kanako knew that something had gone dreadfully wrong. Very, very high on the list of Lycan taboos was changing forms in a public place where it is known that there are humans around. The chaos that developed after Keitaro's roars and the unsuppressed gunshots from the alerted foreign vampires was such that Kanako and the others barely had time to confirm the completion of their mission before they had to beat a hasty retreat prior to the arrival of human authorities. As the team members reconvened briefly at the hospital at Yokohama before returning to their designated posts it quickly became obvious to all that Keitaro was no longer among them, and in the effort to halt the rumor that he'd been killed in the battle the full story of what had happened with him was told. All the Lycans took the news with a quiet nervousness on Keitaro's behalf. Keitaro was very lucky that his actions had not foiled the mission or caused losses among their forces, but he was nevertheless guilty of at least three offenses: Changing forms in public, assaulting a fellow officer and desertion. They all knew that Rikyo's tolerance for any of those violations was minimal, and having committed all three of them at once, the very best Keitaro could hope for was an immediate loss of rank and confinement to the island for the duration of the war ... and that was if Rikyo took it well. But there was nothing else for the rest of them to do than to carry on their previous assignments, and Kanako returned to her hospital along with the detachment of her Lycan H/K group.

* * *

Keitaro had reverted back to his human form shortly after vanishing from scene, as it was difficult for a Lycan to remain in wolf form when such energy-sapping emotions as self-disgust and remorse came to dominate his or her psyche. Right up until the time he got the call on his own cell phone and recognized the phone number as being that of Rikyo's office he had scarcely given thought to the issues of him having changed form in a public place and fleeing the scene of battle. If he needed any reminder of how much trouble he was in, Rikyo's very curtly-worded order to return to the island posthaste served the purpose quite well. However, with the way he was feeling right then the thought of punishment was almost relieving, and as the sun broke over the horizon he solemnly made his way back to the island.

* * *

Kanako was quite tired by the time the night shift retired for the day, but sleep eluded her. In the purely tactical light, it had been a good night – dozens of enemy vampires slain for no loss in one action, plus 5 others in unrelated incidents. Keitaro's actions, though, had cast a gloom over the moods of everyone who knew of them. Kanako in particular was especially downtrodden, and as with Keitaro, her mood had a way of spreading through those she worked with.

* * *

Keitaro was directed straight to Rikyo's office when he arrived back at the island, not that he needed any further instruction. There weren't too many Lycans still on the island and Keitaro was grateful that he didn't have too many eyes watching him wide-eyed in apprehensive speculation about what Rikyo had in store for him. As it was, those few that he did encounter either didn't know what had happened or were going to great lengths to hide the fact that they did.

When he made it to Rikyo's office, Keitaro hesitated for a just a moment before knocking on the door.

"Is that Keitaro?" Came the response from the inside.

"Yes."

"Get in here."

"_Here comes the hurricane," _Keitaro thought to himself, and purposefully opened the door and stepped into the office. He closed the door and walked up to Rikyo's desk, where the Lycan elder kept looking over the reports he had in his hands for the better part of a minute before further acknowledging Keitaro's presence. Rikyo's expression was obviously one of displeasure.

Keitaro had not sat down, and did not move as Rikyo slowly set the reports down. Rikyo did not even look at Keitaro as he leaned back in his chair for a moment in thought, and then he slowly stood up. Walking slowly around the desk, Rikyo came to a stop when his face was an inch from Keitaro's. Keitaro didn't turn his head to return Rikyo's gaze but the fire from his eyes seared the side of his face nonetheless.

The uncomfortable moment lasted what seemed to Keitaro like what must have been half an hour. However long it actually was, Rikyo then turned away from Keitaro and slowly walked over to the window at the left side of the room. There he stood for what seemed like another very long time before the silence was finally broken, though Rikyo's words certainly did nothing to alleviate the tension.

"Effective immediately, you are relieved of command," Rikyo said flatly.

It took a minute for that to sink in.

"Wha .."

"You are also confined to this island for the duration of this conflict. Eizo will take your place in the field and I will take the direct control of this island's defense myself," Rikyo interrupted. "Until further notice, your only responsibility now is yourself. Do as you may just so long as you stay out of the way of the defense effort."

A minute or two of silence passed as Rikyo had nothing more to say for the moment and Keitaro was left speechless. He had been expecting a loss of rank and possibly even a brief detention, but he had certainly not been expecting to be grounded for the duration of the war.

"S ... sir ... I," Keitaro began.

"I don't want to hear it, Keitaro. Not now. You're dismissed."

Against his will and better judgment, Keitaro found himself getting angry. "Sir! Surely I am entitled to ..."

Before Keitaro could finish his sentence, Rikyo rounded on him. Covering the distance between them so fast that even Keitaro didn't perceive it clearly, he grabbed Keitaro's shirt and slammed into him, shoving him several feet backwards and smashing him halfway through the wall. Rikyo radiated such indomitable power that even Keitaro's increasingly intractable disposition evaporated very quickly when face to face with Rikyo's angry grey eyes and sharp teeth.

"Make no mistake about this, my friend. I will kill you myself without a moment's hesitation the very _instant _I decide you've become a threat to the greater good of my people," Rikyo hissed angrily. "Don't you _dare_ come to me with your insubordination after the stunts you pulled tonight. You endanger the secrecy of our race, your mission, the lives of your companions, and you want to tell me about what you're entitled to? It is only because you are who you are that you will _not_ get what you're entitled to, and that's something you should be grateful for. But you're dancing on thin ice, Mr. Urashima, and it's going to be very dark on the other side if you fall through it."

Rikyo then yanked a wide-eyed and stunned Keitaro out of the hole in the wall and shoved him towards the door. "Now do us both a favor and stay out of my sight for a couple of days."

There was not a trace of defiance left in Keitaro as he walked out of the room in subdued silence.

* * *

Motoko woke up shortly after sunrise. Though she had only slept for a few hours, it had been good sleep, and she felt adequately refreshed. Well, refreshed in terms of rest anyway. Although she was focused, determined and completely convinced that she was doing the right thing, the somber reality of what she was about to do was inescapable. There were only 3 possible outcomes, and the only happy ending among them Motoko knew painfully well was excruciatingly unlikely to come to pass. Even before breaking the cover of her leaf and branch blanket, she took a few minutes to meditate and lock down her nerves before carefully making her exit. Taking the utmost care to be certain that there were no prying eyes hidden away in the woods, she slowly began to make her way back towards the dojo. There were still many hours to go before she was to make her move, so Motoko was not going to make any mistakes stemming from being in a hurry.

* * *

True to her colors, Tsuruko had canceled no classes on this day. As most of her students who were participants in the affair with the vampires were still out in the field, aiding their immortal allies in whatever ways they could, few students still present at the dojo knew much or anything about what was going on with Motoko or even that Motoko had been there. The student who'd been knocked out by Motoko had, of course, recovered by morning, although as with her companions that night, she had felt responsible for what had happened and Tsuruko's best efforts to persuade her otherwise had not been enough to convince her to rejoin class that morning.

As with the night before, Tsuruko was not angry either with her students or Motoko. Indeed, she had always felt very sorry for Motoko from the very day she realized that this day would come sooner or later, because she was perfectly aware how close Motoko was with Keitaro and the others at Hinata. Tsuruko hadn't expected the whole 'take one for the team' argument to go very far with Motoko and in fact might have been slightly disappointed in her sister if she had been convinced so easily to turn her back on her old friends. It was much easier for Tsuruko to think of them as enemies, because she didn't know any of them nearly as well, and she didn't buy Motoko's story that becoming a werewolf had not changed Keitaro from the man she'd met briefly years ago into a wolf in a sheep's clothing. She had even fewer reservations about the nature of vampires than werewolves, and between Keitaro and Kanako she found it highly probable that the other Hinata residents also knew all about what was going on, and thus were simply her counterparts on the other side of the front lines; another group of humans lending aid to another group of immortals. Whatever Motoko's sentiments, that made all of them fair game in time of war.

It occurred to Tsuruko near the end of the first morning classes that while Motoko was almost certainly seeking out her friends to tell them all about what she now knew, she may very well return later with some sort of plan to try and interfere with things. She didn't expect that for a couple of days though, but after the first morning class she had asked the four students who had previously been charged with containing Motoko to keep a close eye on the dojo perimeter anyway. They were not to try and confront Motoko should they see her, just track her if possible, and most importantly, get word of it back to her immediately. Anxious for the opportunity to redeem themselves for a failure that Tsuruko had already absolved them of, they accepted the assignment with a newfound enthusiasm.

* * *

The second morning classes came and went, and then it was breakfast time. It was a full hour break during which no classes were held anywhere on the dojo, where students and instructors alike took a break for food and relaxation. Tsuruko had given explicit instructions to her Motoko scouts that they were to come in for all scheduled meals and breaks, and the five of them took their breakfast privately at a small folding table that Tsuruko had set up in front of her office. After a meal and everyone's best efforts at small talk, the students headed back out into the woods and Tsuruko went back to the business of instruction.

* * *

Motoko figured it was into breakfast when she got back inside the dojo after her slow and very cautious hike through the trees. She had figured that if Tsuruko suspected that she was going to try and come back, Tsuruko would figure that break times would be the most logical time for her to sneak in, but had been pleasantly surprised to find no sign of anyone in the woods at all, and the thin population of the dojo at present made moving around once inside the perimeter no more difficult. She still had some time to go before making her move, but she had wanted to be inside well in advance so as to have no problems with getting in when the moment of truth arrived. It wasn't quite as close to the central training area as she would have liked, but the cabin where she'd formerly been detained was likely near the bottom of the list of places they'd look for her if Tsuruko somehow got the inkling that she was back on the grounds. After loosening the wire grids covering the windows just in case, Motoko holed back up in that same cabin. It dryly amused her that the bloody mess she'd left behind hadn't been cleaned up yet.

"_At least I know that this situation is weighty enough to suppress Tsuruko's usual fastidiousness. If she's not keen on dealing with the trouble I cause her, perhaps there's a better chance for a good ending after all ..." _Motoko thought to herself.

* * *

For the first time in quite a while now, the mood among the former Hinata residents was taking a subtle but nevertheless significant upswing. The move to the duplex house had gone off without a hitch and everyone had found the place to their liking. Naru still didn't talk much, but from the second day onwards of living in the new place she started spending more time out of her room and interacting more with everyone else, albeit usually silently. Over the next few days her physical appearance had improved as well. She had resumed bathing without Kitsune having to practically shove her into the shower, her eating habits improved, better hydration and some exposure to sunlight brought her color back, and she was changing clothes of her own free will again too. Her extremely sporadic conversation and still more sluggish than usual actions, however, were a constant reminder that her recovery still had a ways to go.

In a relatively uncommon switch of things, Haruka was rustled out of sleep by Seta as the latter fumbled around in the still as yet not completely organized closet looking for some clothes.

"What time is it?" Haruka asked with a yawn as she angled her head to look at him.

"It's pretty late for the likes of you," Seta answered with a playful grin. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to completely wear you out."

Haruka could hardly help but grin mischievously right back at him. "Don't flatter yourself, stud. Boredom can be just as exhausting as good sex, you know."

"Touché," Seta answered with a chuckle. He seemed to find whatever it was he was looking for, and closed the closet door as he turned around, pulling on the shirt he'd taken from the closet. "So waddya want to do today?"

"Well, we still have a few more hidden assets that you'd like to activate, yes?" Haruka asked, as she rolled herself out of bed and made for the closet herself.

"Yeah."

"If you handle that, I'll get the last of the paperwork in order around here and then we all can get back to work getting this place set up."

"Sounds like a plan," Seta said as he finished dressing himself. After a short silence his brow wrinkled a bit as he remembered a question he'd been meaning to ask Haruka for a couple of days now. "Say, I don't suppose you've heard back from Motoko yet, have you?"

Haruka shook her head. "Nope, not yet."

"You know where that dojo of hers is, don't you? Do you think we should contact her?"

"No. I know it's out of character of her to be gone so much longer than she said she would be and not to get in touch with us to let us know what's going on, but she knows where we are and we know where she is, so if either of us really needs to contact the other it can be done. For now, I think we should leave her to her business."

Seta nodded knowingly. "Good point. Motoko has never liked to be disturbed when she's visiting her sister."

"We'll set up her room for her as close we can to the way it used to be. Whatever Tsuruko has her doing, I'm sure she'll be tired when she gets back."

Haruka also finished getting dressed, and both of them left their bedroom. They were the last ones up on this morning but as always, Shinobu had ensured that there was plenty of breakfast left for them. The young cook was still in the kitchen and quickly began preparing the last of the morning's eggs for them as soon as she saw them coming.

* * *

Motoko was quietly pleased with herself. After her embarrassing loss of control at the end of her first confrontation with Tsuruko that had led to her capture, she had laid low in silence and with utmost patience in her former prison for nearly 8 hours, from the time in the morning when she'd gotten there to now, early evening. It was time for the moment of truth.

The dojo was usually a collection of independent activities. Beginner students here, intermediate students there, advanced students somewhere else, and specialty classes of all skill levels going on all over the place and at all times. While meal and break times were universal, they were not by any means limited to the cafeteria and people remained pretty spread out. However, when circumstances permitted, Tsuruko liked to gather everyone on the grounds into the central training area at dusk for an informal end of day tea ceremony. On busy days this was not always possible, but with so relatively few students on the grounds, Motoko was prepared to wager a lot that the ceremony would be held tonight. In sharp contrast to her great efforts thus far to avoid detection, she wanted as many witnesses as possible for what she was about to do. Taking one more drink of water, Motoko grabbed her sword and carefully peered out the front window of the cabin. The coast clear, she she swiftly slipped out the front door.

* * *

Tsuruko waited patiently for the last of the students to arrive in the central area, as even though there weren't too many of them on site at the moment, they still managed to stay spread out. The sun had set but only just, so there was still plenty of light as everyone took a place on the mats and Tsuruko and a few students began pouring tea. Once everyone had their tea, Tsuruko spoke.

"I am pleased with the progress that is being made here," she said, sweeping the student body with her teacup as she spoke. "There are a few of you that I'd like to speak with before you turn in, and you know who you are. Anyway, thank you all for another good day."

"Thank you, sensei," came the simultaneous reply from all the students.

"Does anyone have anything they'd like to say?"

Tsuruko watched a round of head shakes pass through the students, and then cracked a faint smile. "Then everyone drink up and have a good night."

The small cups of tea were quickly drained, though scarcely had the last clank of an empty teacup against a saucer sounded that Tsuruko's suggestion was firmly laid to rest.

"Now that you're all refreshed, I'm afraid I have to add one more thing to this night's agenda," came a solemn but firm female voice from off to one side. Tsuruko didn't have to see her to recognize the voice as Motoko's, but quickly stood up and turned to face that direction all the same.

Motoko had come out from behind the armory wall and stood facing Tsuruko from across the side of the central area, in a way that those students on one corner of the mats were between the sisters. Sword in hand, Motoko locked eyes with Tsuruko.

"You always wanted me to take over the school someday, and now you've given me a good reason to do so – to prevent you from twisting an institution of honor and wisdom into a tool for your own deranged quest for revenge. If there is to be any further shedding of innocent blood, it will be on your hands alone and not that of our kin. I invoke a Rite of Succession challenge."

The expressions and whispers that passed through the student body after a few moments of silence suggested that none among them were sure whether or not this was some kind of test or even a joke. Although 'Rite of Succession' and 'challenge' used in the same sentence in the way they had obviously referred to something serious, only a few of the students present at this moment knew the full weight of it, and it was these few who especially looked as though they were wondering if this was for real. Or rather, that they were hoping it wasn't. Tsuruko, meanwhile, studied Motoko's eyes for a few more moment while her own expression shifted into something very like the one she was staring at – an expression of resigned but solid resolve.

"You understand, don't you, that I cannot refuse that challenge?" Tsuruko said softly.

"Yes I do," Motoko replied firmly.

"And you also understand the only two ways in which this challenge can end?"

"Yes."

"Motoko ... please ... you don't have to do this. Think about it. Think about everything I expla ..."

A cringe of anger broke through Motoko's expression. "You only insult me with the suggestion that I would do this if I hadn't thought it through backwards and forwards," she forced out in between teeth that were trying hard to clench against her will. "I just came of a week-long solo quest where I had plenty of time to contemplate everything you 'explained' to me, and the more I thought about it, the more horrified and disgusted I became at the thought that my own sister was capable of such a monstrosity as what you've done. No Tsuruko, you will not see my resolve waver through such simple appeals as that. You're the one who will have to decide just how sure you are of what you're doing."

Genuine discomfort and uncertainty was spreading fast through the students, as even though few of them understood much of what was being said, the thought that this was a test or joke was fast dissipating, and the demeanors of those who did seem to know what was happening did nothing to lighten the mood.

Tsuruko took a deep, troubled breath, and another few agonizing moments of silence passed.

"Classes dismissed. Everyone please return to your cabins," Tsuruko then said, waving her hand towards the students but not taking her eyes off Motoko.

"No!" Motoko exclaimed, slicing her sword through the air to emphasize her point, causing the students to halt even before they had moved. She then turned her gaze slightly and directly addressed the students. "You all have a right to know about that which will reflect upon you as apprentices of the Aoyama clan. Whichever way this night goes, the one left standing will find it hard not to explain why this has happened. Clear the mat, but take your places around it!"

Contradicting her instructions in front of her students was always a surefire way to make Tsuruko angry. Her own face quickly reflected this as she spoke much more shortly this time. "Leave my students out of this!This is betwee.."

"Had _you _left them out of this, I'd be happy to oblige. But you've already got them involved. If you're so sure of what you've got them doing, then you ought to prove it in front of them."

The Aoyama sisters now seemed about equally matched in anger levels, and despite her more confrontational front, it was quite obvious that neither of them wanted to do what they were about to do. But equally obvious was the fact that neither was prepared to back down. The dumbfounded students didn't know how to react until Tsuruko seconded an instruction.

"Clear the mat," she said simply, in a flat tone of voice that was meant to conceal the emotions that would otherwise have been betrayed.

As the students quickly complied in rushed confusion, Motoko briskly walked forward until she reached the edge of the mat opposite of where Tsuruko stood. There, she deftly slipped out of her shoes and then stepped on to the mat and waited while Tsuruko took her place on the opposite side of the mat and slowly drew her own blade, only then turning to face Motoko again.

"Just remember that from here on out, you are the only one who can end this with words," Tsuruko said grimly, and raised her sword to a ready stance.

Motoko tried to crack a sarcastic smile, but found herself unable to produce the gesture even with the less than happy intent she had behind it. "If you can cause the death of the completely innocent, why are you so concerned for someone who openly opposes you on your own mat?" She said, and leapt forward into the attack.

Thus began Motoko and Tsuruko's battle. Despite the obvious strong emotions in both fighters, far from being an angry steel-clashing affair the duel had been a true display of the best skills of each. There would be a fast and fierce flurry of a few well practiced and carefully executed attacks and defenses, followed by a variable bout of resizing one another from a safe distance, and then one of them would try something else. As the duel approached an hour and a half neither Aoyama had so much as scratched the other, neither showed any obvious sign of tiring, and neither showed any loss of resolve. Up to this point, there had also been absolutely no words passed between Motoko and Tsuruko.

"Your skills have improved a great deal since we last crossed blades like this," Tsuruko said softly, as they again parted from a quick series of unsuccessful attacks.

Again Motoko could not bring herself to smile. "I would return the compliment to you, but we have never crossed blades like this before," was her reply. "The intent and reasoning is very different this time."

Tsuruko's expression went especially grave. "This should not be happening between sisters. Let us talk some more. We'll figure this out."

Motoko shook her head slightly, in a way that didn't break her vision lock on Tsuruko. "There's nothing to talk about, Tsuruko," she replied solemnly. "You've already done and continue to do a horrible thing, and you must answer for the former and the latter must be stopped. If you don't want this to happen between sisters, you must accept responsibility for your actions and stand down."

"You know I can't do that."

"Then there is no other way."

With those words, Motoko shot forward a sword thrust that was fast enough to force Tsuruko to parry rather than avoid. Equally fast Tsuruko rolled her blade over Motoko's and returned a thrust of her own, but Motoko just managed to dodge it.

"I don't want to kill you, Motoko."

Motoko sneered. "What's the matter, slaying one relative to avenge another not compatible with your little revenge fantasy?"

Tsuruko's expression hardened again. "You're my sister. I love you as much as I love the rest of our family. But if you've become so corrupted by the enemy that you can no longer distinguish friend from foe, then however it may pain me to do so, I will do whatever I must to ensure that our ancestors have their vengeance."

"And just what kind of vengeance is this anyway? Since when is there honor in getting others to fight for you?"

"Would you prefer I just send our kinfolk to die by the dozens just to kill a handful of our enemies? Would that have been to your satisfaction?"

Motoko scowled. "What would have been to my greatest satisfaction is for you to have let the past be the past and not be obsessed with shedding blood today for things that happened centuries ago!" She struck out again with her sword with those words, inciting another brief exchange of ineffectual combat.

"It makes me very sad to hear you say that you can forgive the races of monsters for their innumerable crimes against humanity simply because they haven't been at it for a while," Tsuruko said as they circled one another. "When did you fall so far out of touch with your past?"

"I could pose that same question to you. Do you really think that the very same ancestors you strive so valiantly to avenge would approve of what you've done?"

As Tsuruko prepared to answer, Motoko saw just the faintest sign of uncertainty Tsuruko's face. Seeing that as the best chance she'd had all night, she made a move.

What happened then happened so quickly that only the combatants themselves seemed to see it coming before it was over. There were a few whistles of a blade missing its target and some shuffling of feet before one Aoyama found herself in a position where she either had to strike or be struck. Reflex and resolve controlled her reaction more than conscious will, and even through the collective gasp of the students surrounding them could be heard the gruesome sound of sharpened steel sliding through flesh and bone.

* * *

It wasn't until Keitaro had been moping about his quarters for a good hour that the shock of his encounter with Rikyo had completely worn off and he felt as though the very earth had been yanked out from beneath him. In a complete turnaround from the direction he'd been going, his energy and motivation seeped out of him like water from a punctured bottle as self-loathing quickly replaced much of his anger – not just for what he'd done to Kanako, but now also for losing his chance to avenge the life of his friend and the loss of the Hinata Apartments. Going from feeling ready to take on the entire foreign vampire force by himself to feeling barely able to stand on own two feet in the course of that one hour, he found himself in bed, not exactly asleep but more like simply unconscious for a sudden lack of being aware of the world.

* * *

Kanako was faring better than Keitaro, not that that was saying much. It was costing her tremendous conscious effort which in due course equated to additional fatigue, but her operational efficiency did not suffer too greatly. How much of that fact could be linked to the lack of anything else of great consequence happening that night, however, was an open question. Kanako dutifully finished her watch, just catching Eizo as he arrived at the hospital on his way in, where they exchanged a few quick updates before going their own ways for the day.

* * *

The intensive mental preparation Motoko had put herself through before this moment lessened the pain. She was actually more aware of the strange feeling of her right lung filling with blood than of the fire of the blade that had punctured it and now protruded out from her back. She stood motionless for a few seconds out of sheer shock before the effects of her wound began to tell. Her hands that had been holding her sword high in anticipation of a decisive stroke of her own slowly came down to her sides before her sword fell from her grasp and she dropped to her knees.

By circumstances of that last exchanges of moves, Tsuruko had had her back to Motoko when she had landed her thrust. She had felt her blade strike home, of course, but it was not until Motoko dropped that she released her grip on her sword and turned to face her.

A pair of tears already ran down the elder Aoyama's face, something that none of the students present on this night had ever seen before. A single tear also ran down Motoko's face as she closed her eyes and raised her head high.

"Please withdraw your challenge now, Motoko. It's not too late," Tsuruko said, in a tone of voice that barely concealed the way she felt at that moment.

Motoko slowly shook her head. "That tear was not for me. It was for you. For our entire clan," she replied quietly.

Tsuruko audibly choked up, and was no longer able to even pretend to hide her feelings. "I'm begging you, sister. It doesn't have to be this way. Please don't make me do this. Please."

Motoko opened her eyes and tried to get out a light chuckle, but in doing so she choked on the blood that was fast filling her airways and it came out as a cough, spraying droplets of her blood into the air. She did, however, manage to angle her head to look Tsuruko in the eye even as a more steady stream of blood began running down from her nose.

"How will you avenge me, sister?"

Motoko's answer drew a fresh stream of tears from Tsuruko's eyes as she slowly wrapped her hands back around the handle of her sword.

"Are you ready?" Tsuruko asked, in a voice that was now little more than a whisper.

Motoko simply closed her eyes again and bowed her head, exposing the back of her neck.

Tsuruko closed her eyes too.

Motoko barely had time to gasp as Tsuruko pulled her sword out from her chest before the blade came down again.

Without opening her eyes, Tsuruko bowed to the prostrate form on the mat at her feet. Only as she turned around did she open them, throwing her sword hard to the ground at the same time.

"I want her given full honors and her ashes placed in my family's chamber," she said to no one in particular.

"B ... but sensei ..." sputtered one of her stunned senior students. While there were no written rules on the proper procedures for the loser of a Rite of Succession challenge, it would certainly be unprecedented to grant her the usual honors. However, the student's question was answered firmly by Tsuruko's piercing, fiery gaze even before she had finished answering it, and the student wisely re-worded herself in mid-sentence.

" ... it will be done, sensei," finished the student.

Tsuruko gave no acknowledgment other than to break her death stare off of her, and then Tsuruko walked purposefully off the mat, the students on that side hustling to get out of her way. They all watched in stunned silence as Tsuruko disappeared from sight in the direction of her cabin.


	46. Everything's Different Now

Haruka bobbed her head lightly to the music in her headphones as she steadily worked through the pile of dinner dishes. It was never easy getting Shinobu to leave any housework for anyone else, and only the timely and clever intervention of Suu and Sara spared Haruka the spectacle of having to physically drag the insatiable domestic worker out of the kitchen. With a story of wanting to familiarize her with the defensive preparations that they'd been working on, the two younger girls had been able to convince Shinobu to go with them. Haruka made a note to find out more about these 'defensive preparations' herself later.

The other residents who saw Haruka doing the dishes almost seemed surprised for a moment. It was true that she rarely did much domestic work around the Hinata Apartments during the years that she had been living there herself, but it was not because she had any reservations about doing it. It was just that she had kept herself pretty busy with her tea shop, and for the most part had been content to let Shinobu do her thing. She knew perfectly well that she carried the image of a 'tough gal' who had little concern for 'traditional' female things and had no problem with that, as by and large that was true. Not that Haruka was of the belief that housekeeping was only a woman's responsibility, but especially given her almost equally well-known reputation for running a tight ship at her tea shop, it secretly amused her to no end that even those people who knew her well assumed that the mighty Haruka would never be caught dead washing dishes or cleaning a bathroom.

Haruka was nearly done with the dishes when, catching motion out of the corner of her eye, she turned her head to see Naru walking slowly into the kitchen. Pulling her headphones off her head, she turned to face her.

"Hey," Haruka said simply in greeting.

Naru smiled weakly. "I'm sorry, I was going to try and get a drink without disturbing you."

"Disturb me from doing dishes? Not even Shinobu would find that offensive."

Naru kept her smile as she nodded her head, walking over to the refrigerator and getting herself a bottle of juice. She seemed to be set to just walk away again, and so Haruka grabbed a dish towel with one hand and held out her other hand in a gesture to stop her.

"Naru, you got a few minutes?" She asked as she dried her hands.

Naru seemed puzzled but nodded an affirmative. Haruka stepped over to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of juice for herself, and then nodded her head towards the dining room table. "Mind if we sit down and talk for a bit?"

"S ... sure. Is something wrong?"

Haruka sighed and shook her head. "The only thing that's wrong is that we can't talk anymore without you assuming that there must be something wrong. Once upon a time, we used to talk freely to each other. Do you remember?"

Naru nodded.

"I know we've had our differences in recent times, but I don't like the strangeness between us. I was hoping we could give the old times a go."

Naru's face remained largely blank but her apparent confusion was still readable. Haruka smiled and let out a light chuckle. "Look, let's just go sit down, OK?"

"Alright."

The two of them walked over to the table and took seats facing each other. Haruka let Naru take a drink of juice before opening the conversation.

"I'm very glad to see that you've been feeling better. Is there anything you need right now that we don't have?"

Naru shook her head. "No, I don't think so. Thank you for asking though."

Haruka took another drink of juice. "So what are your plans for the rest of the night?"

Naru shrugged lightly. "I don't really have any plans. Kitsune is with Dr. Hasagawa tonight and everyone else is just sort of doing their own thing. I'll probably just watch a movie or something and go to sleep."

"Well that sounds rather dull. How's about this – Seta is going to be out tonight and once I'm done in the kitchen I haven't got much to do either. Are you up for a late movie or maybe a game or two of bowling? On me of course."

Naru obviously hesitated, not out of reluctance of spending time with Haruka specifically but more with the idea of leaving the house and doing something in public, both things she had still never done voluntarily since the disaster at the Hinata Apartments.

Haruka could easily read both of these things from Naru. "You've made such progress since we got here. The next step is to go back out into the world again. If you're at all up to it, I urge you to accept my offer."

Haruka did her best to sound as encouraging as she could without sounding demanding. After a few minutes of thought, Naru in turn tried to sound as enthusiastic as she could without sounding phony with her answer.

"I haven't been bowling in a long time. I guess I could play a few games," Naru replied, her smile at least semi-sincere but lacking in energy.

Haruka took another drink of juice and then secured the cap back on the bottle. "I'll meet you back here in 20 minutes then," she said as she stood up. "Seta's got the van so we'll have to take the train."

* * *

With that, Naru went up to her room to get ready and Haruka hustled through the last of the dishes. Being the low-maintenance creature that she was, the older woman made only a quick stop in her room before catching up with Naru.

* * *

In an unusual twist of things, Keitaro had given Haruka a sound piece of advice very shortly after the incident with the debut of Suu's special armor – lose the silver bullets and switch to some form of incendiary round. Silver was more lethal to Lycans for sure, but useless against vampires, and while Keitaro had not been very successful at apologizing to Haruka on the behalf of his kinfolk, he was at least successful in persuading her that the foreign vampires presented more of the threat to her and the other residents than did Lycans. The incendiary rounds, he told her, would be effective against whichever species threatened her and the others again. Haruka took her pistol out from her lock box and purposefully grabbed four full magazines for it, each loaded with incendiary bullets. She loaded one into her weapon and chambered a round, then undid her belt and pulled her pants down around her thighs. Wrapping a holster around her waist, she secured her pistol and her spare ammo into it before covering it up again with her pants.

For all her reassurances to Naru and to everyone, Haruka was no fool and knew that there was no reason whatsoever to assume that the danger to them had passed. She didn't want everyone to become hermits but at the same time she was glad that no one felt like spending too much time out in public, and anytime she left the house – especially in the company of her friends – she was always armed. So was Seta. Double-checking herself in her bathroom mirror to make sure that her weapon was satisfactorily concealed, Haruka hurried out of her room to meet Naru by the couches.

* * *

Tsuruko had hardly moved since she had first slumped down on the small table in her cabin and buried her face in her arms. She wept only briefly but the tears never stopped flowing. All the same, it had been all she could do to keep herself together until she made it to the privacy of her own cabin.

She fully understood now why Motoko had insisted on dueling in front of the student body. Tsuruko had figured that it had to do with forcing her to confront the issue, but now that the duel was over and Motoko was dead, she realized that she had underestimated her sister one last time. Very few of the students on the grounds right now knew anything about vampires, werewolves or their history with the Aoyama clan, most of the advanced students who did know being out in the field. Most of the students still at the dojo were either newer and lower ranking students that Tsuruko did not want involved with high affairs like this, or were students that she herself for one reason or another did not want informed of things. Motoko had not come right out and said what this was all about during the duel, but she had said enough to where there was absolutely no way Tsuruko would be able to give any plausible explanation of why she had killed her own sister other than the truth ... and the compliment of students would be needing an explanation.

The real irony was that near the end of their duel, Motoko had gotten Tsuruko to feel the only real pang of doubt she'd ever had about this whole affair, but now that she was dead, Tsuruko's resolve was hardening more than ever. By the time Tsuruko's thoughts were interrupted by two of her students sent to inform her that Motoko's remains were dressed and ready for cremation, her guilt and grief had largely been replaced by anger.

* * *

As Tsuruko watched Motoko's pyre burn, the flames reflecting in her eyes also reflected the new fire forming behind them.

"_You asked me how I will avenge you, Motoko," _Tsuruko thought to herself. _"I can answer that question now. I will tirelessly focus all of my personal effort into ensuring that all those who have led you astray pay the price for your life."_

Tsuruko unsuccessfully bid to stop a new stream of tears, although these were now more tears of cold fury than grief.

"_If anything, your loss only proves me in the right," _Tsuruko's thoughts continued. _"To spill Aoyama blood in battle is one thing, to deceive an Aoyama into turning against her own is beyond unforgivable. I will see this through, my sister, and your death will not have been in vain. It will remind us all that the dangers of the past can still hit us where it hurts the most today and that sacrifices must be made in the name of a higher justice."_

The flames burned on for a long time, and when they finally died down, Tsuruko excused her assistants usually charged with such duties and collected the ashes into an urn herself. After taking the urn to her family's chamber, she again disappeared into her cabin and no one saw her again that night.

* * *

Despite her lack of energy, Naru had skill with a bowling ball, and what Haruka had thought would be a subtle effort on her part to hand Naru a slim victory became a legitimate win for the younger girl.

"Nicely done, Naru. I didn't know you were such a bowler," Haruka said, as she reset the scoreboard for another game.

Naru grinned a little out of one side of her mouth. "Bringing me out to wail on me at the bowling alley was the therapy you had in mind, huh? Why on earth didn't you become a shrink, Haruka? You're a natural."

Haruka responded with a double-ended grin. "They told me that there were already too many practitioners of my particular theory."

Naru chuckled a little and then broke into a yawn.

Haruka cocked an eyebrow. "You sure you're up for another game? You've already obliged me, if you want to call it a night, I won't try to talk you out of it."

Naru considered it for a moment, but then nodded her head. "I have no where to be tomorrow. I'm good for another round. Besides, you were right. It does feel good to get out again."

The two women were standing on opposite sides of the ball return as they were talking, and after Naru spoke, Haruka caught Naru's bowling ball as it came out of the return chute and handed it back to her with a sincere smile. "Welcome back to the land of the living, my friend. Now let's see if that first game was newcomer's luck or not."

"If you're saying that even a dead girl can beat you at bowling, then I think the question of newcomer's luck becomes entirely academic."

Feeling better than she did when they had first arrived at the bowling alley, Naru took the offered bowling ball and pulled of a spare for her first frame.

* * *

It was to be nearly 3 full days before Kanako was able to get away from her post to go and see Keitaro. Rikyo had, of course, called her ahead of time to inform her that Eizo would be replacing Keitaro as her partner, and she didn't have to ask why. Because Keitaro had gone missing she had had no choice but to report what had happened, and she had also had to tell the whole story less her version of things be contradicted by everyone else at the scene and her own credibility damaged for no gain to anyone. Even after Eizo arrived, she could hardly just dump everything on him and ditch her duties for personal business. Official business continued to be good for those three days, with many more victories against the enemy with disproportionately few losses to themselves.

* * *

Keitaro was sitting slumped in his chair when he heard the knock on the door to his quarters. He heard it, but neither his mind nor his body mustered a response. He didn't even form the thought in his head that maybe if he just ignored whoever it was at the door that they would just go away. He just sat there and didn't so much as budge.

It had been the roughest 3 days of Keitaro's life since the days immediately following Mutsumi's death, which would make it the second most miserable period in Keitaro's entire life. He had not completely absolved himself from Mutsumi's death despite Kanako's best efforts to that end, but in this case there was absolutely no questioning his guilt. He had hurt one of the people he cared about the most. Not through negligence, not as the result of bad judgment or failure to think things through, and not just emotionally – in a moment of blind rage he had lashed out at a person who had always loved him unconditionally, and struck her with a blow that would have seen a human dead before they hit the ground. Kanako was fine, of course, but that was beside the point. What if Naru managed to really anger him sometime, as was almost certain to happen once in a while in a long-term relationship? Would he knock her head off too? Or what if Suu should catch him on a bad day with one of her obnoxious devices? Would he rip her throat out and smash her machine into dust? He had proven that he was capable of turning his power against someone he loves. Once that bridge was crossed, it didn't matter who was on the other end in the future. No one who happened to be near him when the going got rough was safe. Kanako, Naru, Shinobu ... it made no difference. Needless to say, 3 days of having nothing else to do but ponder these things had drained all spirit from his heart. Not even the thought of avenging Mutsumi could put it back in. Quite to the contrary, the notion of tapping into the same reserve of fury-fueled energy that had spilled over to burn Kanako made him almost welcome the fact that he didn't feel like he could fight off an overly aggressive cockroach if his very life depended on it.

The second, more forceful knock on his door though, and most especially the voice that spoke from behind it this time, did force a reaction.

"I know you're in there, Keitaro. Please open the door," came Kanako's unmistakable voice.

A nervous knot instantly began to twist tightly in Keitaro's stomach. He didn't want to see anyone right now, but the very _last_ person he felt like facing at the moment was Kanako. He wasn't worried about an angry vampire at his door come to give him a revenge beating. If he thought for a minute that Kanako would do that, he would have been more than happy to let her in ... at least that way Keitaro could feel that he'd been halfway punished for his actions. Though it had angered him at the time, in retrospect he was loathing the fact that Rikyo had let him off the hook with a simple demotion and house arrest. But he knew perfectly well why Kanako was here. She couldn't care less about what he'd done to her, Kanako was here to console him and try to rescue him from what pathetically little punishment he'd actually been given.

Despite the rapid changing of his mental focus, he still gave no outward response until Kanako pounded on his door even harder for a third time.

"You can open this door yourself, Keitaro, or I can kick it in _my_self. Either way, I'm coming in, so can we please do this the easy way for a change?"

After a couple seconds of silence, Keitaro could hear Kanako stepping back to wind up her door-smashing kick. It was then that he made one last effort to head this moment off.

"Please, Kanako. I really don't want to do this right now," he said weakly.

"Yeah, well, you rarely ever do seem to want to deal with your problems these days, so if I don't make you do it, you'd never move forward. Open the door."

Keitaro's mind was working as frantically as it could under the circumstances to come up with a passable excuse, but he was out of time. He heard Kanako take another step backwards.

"I'm going to count to three Keitaro, and then ..."

"Alright, alright."

Kanako could hear the acceptance of defeat in Keitaro's voice even in the two words he spoke, so she stepped back up to the door. A moment later, the lock clicked and then the door slowly swung inward to reveal a very downtrodden Keitaro standing along side it, clearing the path for Kanako to enter the room. Keitaro didn't look at her though. His eyes were firmly fixated on the floor.

Despite her threat of a forced entry, Kanako wanted to make this meeting as un-confrontational as Keitaro's resistance allowed. Rather than simply step inside and touch noses with him, she calmly walked in the door and past him to sit herself down in the very same chair that where Keitaro had spent the bulk of the past 72 hours.

It crossed Keitaro's mind briefly to simply leave the room himself, but he quickly came full circle to realize that if Kanako was prepared to beat his door in, having to chase him down to force the issue wasn't likely to stop her. With a short sigh, he closed the door again, then slowly moved over to the bed and sat down on it. Because of the present layout in the room, she was slightly behind him, and they were facing 90 degrees from one another, so she was facing him directly and he was still facing away from her and looking at the ground.

"First thing's first," Kanako began. "I will speak with Rikyo before I leave the island to return to my post. If for no other reason than Gennai trusts me and Rikyo trusts Gennai, I would give it decent odds that I can convince Rikyo to release you on my recognizance. You will no doubt have to stay with me at all times but at least you'd be back in action."

"Why?" Came Keitaro's quiet reply.

"You don't belong here right now, Keitaro. You should be out there doing your part to win this war and avenge your friends. A moment of over-passion shouldn't take that all away from you."

"That's not what I meant."

A few moments of silence passed before Keitaro finished his thought. Kanako allowed him to do so without saying anything.

"I don't deserve to be out there. If I can do what I did to you, then no one around me is safe. Something like what happened at that hotel is bound to happen again. I'm a threat to my own mission."

Kanako shook her head. "You sure look to me like you've learned your lesson. Give yourself some credit. But if it will make you feel better, I'll bring enough of that special drug I hit you with last time to keep you down for a week. Whatever it takes, we'll make it work."

Keitaro shook his head right back at her. "You can't lead a battle and babysit me at the same time. The mission is the most important thing. I refuse to be any more of a burden than I've already been."

If Keitaro was certain that Kanako wasn't going to get angry with him, then he got his first surprise at that moment when Kanako rapidly shot to her feet and flung the chair backwards in the process. Keitaro still didn't look in her direction despite the commotion but in a flash Kanako was in his face all the same. And she was most definitely angry.

"These past few weeks have been all I've known of you for over a decade," she began fiercely. "But even assuming that I didn't get a good look at the real you before all this mess began, I know you would never have come this far if you were nothing more than a 'burden!'"

For the first time during since she had set foot inside Keitaro's quarters, she looked away from him as she took a few deep breaths to calm herself down, though it didn't help her much.

"First it's uncontrollable rage, now it's hopeless self-loathing. It's one thing to hold on to the past so that you might learn from it, but it's quite another to let the past hold on to you and shut down your ability to move on and keep going! The only way you're ever going to beat this is to finish what you've started, so that all the losses endured in the process were not in vain! I am here for you but you have to meet me half-way!"

Much to Kanako's frustration, both Keitaro's physical demeanor and his words appeared completely unmoved by her plea. His voice was flat as he spoke.

"Meeting you halfway is staying right here. Maybe the closest thing to winning I can get is simply not to make things any worse. I'd rather have a failure to set things right on my conscience than the knowledge that there was more hardship and death because of me. I was lucky this time – the battle was not disrupted and you were not permanently injured. But if you were human, you'd be dead, and next time I could turn the tide of battle against us. How can you ask me to take that risk?" Keitaro started to stand up as he finished talking.

For all her lecturing of Keitaro, Kanako was prone to impulsive actions herself when provoked in certain ways, and issues pertaining to Keitaro were at the top of that list. She felt her emotions welling up and was not keen on yet another emotionally-draining conversation slash argument when none of the ones they'd already had had seemed to have any lasting effect. As much out of knee-jerk reaction as any conscious decision, Kanako took this situation down a very different road.

Keitaro had been a half-second away from turning himself away from Kanako's gaze when very firm hands latched onto his shoulders and pulled him right back into her face. Kanako's eyes blazed their vampiric icy-blue as she spoke one last time.

"_Consider this a vote of confidence," _she hissed, and without giving him a chance to say anything else, her arms moved up from his shoulders, hooked around his neck, and yanked their lips together, squeezing a single, slim tear from each of her eyes as she shut them tight.

Kanako was slightly shorter than Keitaro, and she more pulled herself up to his lips than pulled him down to hers. As Keitaro momentarily recoiled in surprise, those two things combined to drive their joined center of gravity too far up and back, and they fell back on the bed.

Keitaro's reflexive recoil was indeed only momentary, as very quickly his body seemed to disconnect from his conscious mind and ceased resisting even before he'd really started. Kanako's kiss seemed to swamp his system with pheromones, and his body, deficient of energy and will at that moment, seemed eager to accept any energy that could be made to flow through it. Even Keitaro's consciousness, which was the source of his initial reaction, seemed to grow quieter within itself in its objections as this new and powerful source of energy electrified his being.

Keitaro didn't even notice it himself, but as Kanako had fallen on top of him and her weight shifted as she had continued to kiss him passionately, her sharp fangs had inadvertently cut his lip. Only a drop or two of his blood touched her tongue before the small cut had healed over, but it was just that right kind of extra stimulation at the right time that also triggered changes in her own state of mind.

Keitaro's perception of time had begun to distort mere seconds after Kanako's kiss. Seconds and minutes ceased to have any meaning, and shortly after Kanako's hands had begun to travel elsewhere but his neck, his own hands followed suit, acting, it seemed to Keitaro, completely of their own accord. For a short time Keitaro was perceiving two different versions of reality at the same time. The one Keitaro that wanted to scream at him to stop, but simply lacked the energy to do so, this was his 'conscious' self, and was quickly developing the sensation of drifting off to sleep. And then it was some 'other' Keitaro, who knew nothing more than his immediate and primal needs were being met, and even at this opening stage was already beginning to feel like some sort of 'recharging.'

His conscious self knew exactly what was happening on the physical plane, but even through its objections it could not resist then the subconscious call to shut down and allow itself to be replenished.

"_Naru ... forgive me ..." _was the last coherent thought of that piece of his reality, before it succumbed to the sleep and the promise of a better tomorrow. From that moment on until evening, what went on in his other reality played like a dream in the sleep of his consciousness.


	47. The Invisible Enemy

Keitaro slowly began to emerge from sleep, the way one does after a sleep so deep that even the part of the brain responsible for dreaming turns out the lights and catches some rest. His consciousness was only aware of a feeling of total relaxation and rejuvenation by the time his worldly senses began to return to him, although the first things those senses picked up on would interrupt that feeling in a short order.

He was lying on his back, and he became aware of a slender pair of arms wrapped around his torso and back, and a silky head of hair tucked up under his chin. The realization that he was naked did not specifically light up in his still mostly unconscious mind, although the sensation of bare skin against bare skin was unmistakable and soothing. The skin touching his was only lukewarm but nevertheless spread a comforting heat where it touched him. His nose registered a strong female scent ... an intimate female scent ... and it was all over himself as well as the source lying next to him. Keitaro also recognized his own scent on the person wrapped around him.

An image of Naru flashed across his mental image screen, and might have only deepened his sense of wellbeing had the memory of Naru not also included her representation in his other senses.

Though the female scent around him was familiar, it absolutely did not match Naru's. Now that he thought about it, he remembered thinking many a time that Naru was a veritable furnace, often pumping out enough body heat to keep the both of them warm under light cover even on the coldest of nights. The woman whose bare body was nudged up against his was a lot cooler to the touch than that. She was definitely not Naru.

Keitaro's eyes finally flew open as adrenaline surged through his bloodstream and rudely sent his feeling of contentment through the floor. Sure enough, even though he could not see her face, Kanako's hair was shorter and of a different color than Naru's and Keitaro recognized it immediately. However, before he could even shoot himself to an upright position, the adrenaline rush ceased and his sense of panic soothed over without ever forming completely.

Ever the light sleeper, Kanako's head rested on the top of Keitaro's chest and even its momentary change from a steady rise and fall to a deep lung-filling breath and a few seconds of hyperventilation was enough to draw her out of her sleep as well.

"Keitaro? Are you alright?" Kanako snaked her arms back from around Keitaro's body and pulled away from him just enough to where she could face him.

Keitaro slowly sat up, taking a few slow, deep breaths as the last of the adrenaline flushed through his system. Kanako rotated at the waist so as to keep facing him, propping herself up with her left arm, but otherwise did not move.

"Yeah, I'm OK," Keitaro replied softly after a moment. Paradoxically, that was the problem. He _was_ OK. His mind and his heart alike knew that neither should be, and yet both were. The idea that had been intimate with anyone other than Naru was inconceivable to him, and yet here he sat, in bed and in the buff, with a likewise unclad Kanako, and the foggy memories of the actual event that were trickling back into his brain left absolutely no doubt. And apart from that voice in his head telling him that he _ought _to, no part of him was protesting the situation. Beyond his understanding and against his will, he felt completely at peace.

Kanako gave him a couple of minutes to come up with something else to say, but when he failed to say anything she spoke again.

"Different, isn't it?" She said softly.

"What's different?" Keitaro replied, without turning to look at Kanako.

"The intimate connection between immortals. It's so much more than one could ever have with a human, yes?"

With those words, Keitaro did turn to face Kanako with something of a scowl, but again he found that the negative emotions he expected simply would not appear. His scowl melted away.

"It ... it was ... different," he said softly after a few moments. "My memory is a bit hazy right now."

Kanako nodded. "Let me guess. What memories you have are dream-like, like an out-of-body experience, and right now you are trying oh so hard to be angry with yourself and with me, but try as you might it's just not happening. Am I right?"

Keitaro looked away from her again and did not answer, which in of itself was enough of an affirmative for Kanako.

"Passion between immortals goes way beyond the physical and emotional. Our Ki energies are much stronger than that of humans and blending them that way can be a little overwhelming to the brain if you don't know what's coming. It's been a while but I remember. We have needs that can only be met by other immortals, and if you deny yourself these things for too long, it's only natural that you don't know what to do with the feeling."

Keitaro was obviously trying to put all the pieces together in his head and still offered no response to Kanako's words. She gave him another few minutes and then scooted forward on the bed. She pressed her still bare chest against his back and started to drape her arms around him as she spoke.

"I know that this was not exactly wha ..."

Her words were interrupted when Keitaro jumped slightly when she tried to put her arms around him. She stopped, backed off a bit and propped herself up with her arms instead.

Keitaro took a deep breath and then turned his head to face her again. "Look Kanako, I just ..."

He paused for a few moments, long enough for Kanako to raise an eyebrow in question. Keitaro sighed and looked away again before finishing his sentence.

"... I just need some time to think. I've got a lot to think about."

Kanako regarded him for a second, and then decided not to press the issue any further right then. She nodded.

"Alright," she acknowledged, then turned around and swung herself out of the bed. She collected her clothes off the floor and started to get dressed, while Keitaro did the same.

* * *

Kanako made a few phone calls from Keitaro's quarters before going over to Rikyo's office. She was there for over an hour and it was well after dark by the time she returned. She would not be drawn on the content of her conversation with Rikyo but she did produce a signed letter from him releasing Keitaro to her command. That simple message actually occupied nearly two whole printed pages, the remainder of the volume being filled by threats of the Draconian consequences to befall Keitaro should he step out of line again. It was better than Keitaro had expected, and as Kanako began to fill him in on the things he'd missed out on, the quick reversion to business pushed the awkward new dimension of their personal relationship onto the back burner for the time being.

* * *

The transition into their new home, even if that home was potentially temporary, continued to go well, and the past 9 days had seen further improvements in the quality of life for Haruka, Seta and their charges. By the ninth day Naru was almost recognizable as her old self, at least in terms of taking care of her daily business. She still didn't talk half as much as she used to, but no one had to twist her arm or even hold her hand anymore to get her to take care of herself and act like a living being instead of the living dead. Kitsune had even conspired with Koan to provide a pair of jacuzzis – a poor substitute for the natural hot springs they had previously been accustomed to, but relaxing and comfortable nonetheless, and certainly better than trying to soak in a bathtub.

* * *

It was on this ninth evening that Haruka found herself alone in one of the jacuzzis. She had been reading a book for over an hour, but eventually set it aside, and with a wet hand towel covering her face, she settled back into one of the form-fitting corner seats.

"Care for some company?"

Seta's voice gently broke Haruka of her spa-induced trance.

"By all means," replied Haruka, motioning with her hand to the corner seat next to hers but otherwise not moving.

Shedding his towel, Seta stepped up the steps and then slowly lowered himself into the bubbling water. There was a few moments of silence as Seta got settled in.

"How was your day?" Haruka said. As business slowly returned to usual, they both were returning to work. For the safety of her employees as well as herself, Haruka had closed down her tea shop – due to 'licensing issues' as she had told her employees – but to maintain her business and keep herself and her staff on an income, she had arranged to supply some local restaurants with her teas, and her employees ran tea booths in retail centers near their own homes. They deposited their earnings, minus their pay, into a new and anonymous business account that Haruka had created, and Emailed Haruka their tea orders. Haruka had gone from shop keeper to logistics manager, but keeping it all coordinated was no less a busy task. Seta meanwhile had resumed heading his archaeological groups, though this was an even more challenging task when he could not be there in person. As he was not prepared to leave his 'family' and go off on some dig halfway across the planet, video conferencing had to suffice, and evaluating finds and making decisions this way still ate up a lot of time. The end result of this necessity was that Haruka and Seta had less time for each other.

"About the usual. The Yucatan team is still working a veritable goldmine," was Seta's answer. Though nothing would lure him from the people he cared about in times like these, the barest trace of disappointment at not being there was in his voice. He was almost past his previous record for the longest time having gone without being part of an expedition.

"It will be nice when this is all over and we can all go back to ordinary lives, won't it?" Haruka obviously hadn't missed the longing in her partner's words.

"Yes it will."

Several more minutes of silence passed, as each soaked in their own thoughts.

"What are you going to be up to tomorrow?" Seta asked after that silence.

"I was actually thinking about taking the train to Kyoto and checking in with Motoko. I'm sure she's in depth with whatever she's doing there, but I'm rather surprised that she hasn't checked in by now."

"Why don't you just give her a call? Our phone lines here are trace-shielded."

Haruka turned her head towards Seta and smiled slightly, though she did not take the towel off her face.

"You're not the only one suffering from a bit of cabin fever. At least you have gotten to take a few day trips to this or that airport or harbor to examine the artifacts that your digging crews send in. I've been cooped up here for nearly two weeks now."

Seta nodded to himself. "Fair enough, fair enough," he said. "Will this be a 'day trip' for you, or do you intend to even things up by staying out a few days?"

"Just a day trip. I don't think I could enjoy myself staying away overnight right now anyway."

"Good answer. I always felt the same when I had the chance to stick around the harbor into the next afternoon."

Haruka peeled the towel off her face and flung it weakly at Seta. "Glad my little plan meets with your approval, Captain," she replied playfully.

Seta didn't let go of Haruka's witty response. "Well if it's my turn to be Captain, then I order you to come over here and sit with me."

Haruka cocked an eyebrow and raised her right hand to her forehead in a mock salute as she slid out of her corner seat.

"Aye sir," she said, and rolled onto her stomach, put her feet against the opposite side of the jacuzzi and pushed herself off of it. As the width of the spa wasn't much wider than the length of Haruka's horizontal body, her body crossed his in a narrow X fashion in less than a full second. As Seta moved to put his arms around her, Haruka spoke again.

"Cadet Urashima requesting a back rub ... sir," she added with a slightly sensual accent.

"Granted Cadet. You've earned it."

Haruka crossed her arms over the padded armrest, then tucked her chin over them and closed her eyes as Seta's fingers began to tenderly knead her bare back.

If any still considered Haruka on the uptight side, she really did know how to relax. The lean and toned muscles beneath her skin were loose and soft to to his touch, and while she was not nearly as concerned with maintaining her 'tough' image as she once was, she still felt almost 'oddly' feminine right there in his arms. As Seta looked down her a minute later, most of her form was heavily obscured by the frothy bubbles floating at the top of the water, but that didn't really change what he saw.

"_Great Sands of China, she is beautiful," _Seta thought to himself. _"No matter how many times I see her, I never stop thinking that. As long as I have her, I can handle anything."_

Haruka was practically purring like a like a cat by then, and Seta decided not think anymore. He leaned his head back into the padded headrest of his seat, closed his eyes as well, and just tuned out everything else but the feeling of Haruka's skin on his fingertips.

* * *

The next morning, after a leisurely breakfast during which she told everyone of her plans, Haruka saved herself a little time by allowing Seta to drop her off at the train station. As a general guideline, they tried to make sure that at least one of them was home at all times on the off-chance that something happened, but the fact that the other residents were free to come and go as they pleased – and even more perhaps the quiet admission that there would be little the two of them _together_ could do against a surprise attack from multiple vampires – meant that they had made occasional exceptions to this rule.

* * *

Meanwhile, many of those already at Haruka's destination were feeling more than a little uneasy. It had been clear from the prolonged absence of most of the advanced students that something odd was afoot, and the violent and ultimately deadly clash between Tsuruko and Motoko had certainly been enough on its own to cast clouds over the dojo even without the dramatic and indeed rather frightening changes in Tsuruko's demeanor that had followed. She was normally firm and realistic with her students but also very objective and good-natured with her students, but in the 2 days following the incident, she had suddenly turned very aggressive and borderline unsafe. All traces of good nature were gone, and it was only the very carefully-worded efforts of the few remaining advanced students that convinced her to take leave from teaching after the second day before any 'injuries were needlessly had.'

After that, Tsuruko had all but disappeared from view. Almost the only time she was seen, it was noticed, was in the late evening or early nighttime hours, and often in the company of strange people that no one else had ever seen before. The advanced students ran the classes as best they could for the next week, made more difficult by Tsuruko's unapproachability. Still, someone occasionally had to bring things to her attention.

* * *

Tsuruko was knelt before a katana on a ceremonial mount that was an ancient Aoyama heirloom when she heard a soft knock at her office door. She had no meeting with her 'associates' later this evening, and since she was not leading any of the afternoon classes, she could think of nothing else to do at that moment than be in the presence of this icon that reminded her of why she was doing what she was doing. Barely acknowledging the sound even to herself, she made no response whatsoever until a second, slightly louder knock annoyed her enough to say something.

"Enter!" She spat, in the tone of voice that suggested anything but entering.

One of her advanced students slowly opened the door, stepped inside and bowed.

"I am sorry to bother you sensei, but there is a woman here to see you," said the student.

"Who is it?" Tsuruko asked harshly.

"She says her name is Haruka Urashima. She was actually looking for Motoko, but when I told her that Motoko was ... unavailable ... she asked to see you instead."

The student could not help but notice the instant change in Tsuruko as he spoke, not at the mention of Motoko's name, but before that at the name of the visitor. Tsuruko purposefully rose to her feet but seemed to expand in all directions as a visible wave of energy surged through her. With a dangerous gleam in her eye, she sharply turned to look at the student addressing her and spoke equally sharply.

"Where is she now?"

"She is waiting by the front gates."

"Send her in at once."

"Yes sensei."

With that, the student bowed again and promptly excused himself.

Tsuruko's thoughts began to race.

"_Ms. Haruka Urashima herself. The matriarch of the house that brought my sister down," _Tsuruko thought to herself. Her eyes glanced back to her treasured Aoyama sword in coordination with her next thought. _"I will slay this demon with that very blade, right here, right now. Let her blood be spilled on the same ground as the one she led astray."_

Adrenaline began to pump through Tsuruko's veins at the thought. With fierce purpose she reached down and grabbed the sword, practically throwing it into her obi as she secured it to her side. She had actually drawn the sword and began imitating the cuts she planned to use before she heard the 'echo' of her continuing thought process.

"_No," _she thought. Slowly now, she resheathed her blade as her inner monologue continued. _"Do not act rashly, Tsuruko. Think clearly. This Urashima woman is no fool. She has no doubt told the others where she was going. Kill her now and you risk exposing your involvement. If that Keitaro learns of your involvement while the enemy is still strong, he could bring a whirlwind down upon your clan that your meager numbers cannot handle. However much you don't like it, you must continue to act by proxy."_

Tsuruko called upon every bit of her skill to bring her furious energy under control. She walked over to her desk and slowly sat down in the chair. Closing her eyes, she took several deep breaths until she was satisfied that neither her body language nor her Ki signature would give away her true feelings ... she knew her adversary would not be easily deceived. To help, she rustled up an instructional scroll she had been working on, and rather absent-mindedly began to write in it again with her quill pen.

* * *

Tsuruko continued her self-calming efforts right up until she heard another knock on her door.

"Come in," Tsuruko answered, speaking in her normal tone for the first time in over a week.

The same student as before opened the door, then stepped in and to the side to permit Haruka to enter. Haruka stepped in and also offered Tsuruko a bow, and the student slipped back out, closing the door behind him.

"Sorry to drop in unannounced. I wanted to check in with Motoko and I decided I could use a little day trip. It seems though that I've missed her," Haruka said, starting to speak even before the student had completely closed the door.

Tsuruko had stood up as Haruka had entered the room and had returned her bow. She responded to Haruka's words very casually.

"I had to send her and a few other students on an errand. I'm afraid I didn't give her much of a chance to phone home and let it be known that she would be unreachable for a couple weeks. My apologies."

"No apology needed. I'm sure Motoko appreciates the chance to take her mind off recent events."

What sounded like mockery to Tsuruko's ears once again demanded every self-control trick Tsuruko knew to keep her true thoughts to herself.

"Yes, Motoko told me that your old home burned down and that one of your friends did not survive. You all have my condolences," Tsuruko replied instead.

"Thank you."

A brief moment of silence passed as Haruka thought of something else to say.

"Well," she began. "I had set aside most of the evening for Motoko and it looks like you are busy, but I'd feel rather foolish having come all the way to Kyoto just to say 'Hi-Bye.' With your blessing, I'll have a look around for a while and then be on my way."

"Be my guest," Tsuruko said, sweeping the direction of the training areas with her arm as she spoke. "The afternoon classes will last another 45 minutes if you care to watch. Otherwise, by all means, wander where you will."

"Thank you. I'll see if I can find you again before I leave."

With that, Haruka went for the door. As she was just opening it, Tsuruko made her move.

"Oh, Urashima?" She said.

Haruka stopped and turned to look at Tsuruko again. "Please, you can call me Haruka. Yes?"

"Motoko mentioned to me that the students on cleaning duty evidently threw away the piece of paper on which she'd written down your new address when they cleaned her cabin. It might be late in the night when she returns, if you'd like to write it down again and leave it with me, I'll post it to the wall in her cabin so she doesn't have to call you when she gets back."

Haruka nodded and walked back to Tsuruko's desk.

"Sure thing," she said.

Tsuruko handed Haruka a small notepad and a pen, onto which Haruka scribbled down the address of their new duplex.

"Here you go. Thank you yet again. And by the way, if you'd like to come back with Motoko and see the new place, you are more than welcome."

For the third time, Tsuruko found her ability to hide her true thoughts a challenge.

"I would love to see your new place. I might just take you up on that in the near future," she said, her voice made more cheerful by an underlying anticipation far more malicious than accepting friendly hospitality.

Haruka smiled and bowed her head slightly to Tsuruko.

"Alright then. If I don't catch you before I leave, then I'll see you at the duplex."

* * *

Tsuruko waited a couple of minutes after Haruka had left before dropping her screens. Though with the new thoughts that were running through her mind, she was indeed of a more amiable state of mind than she had been before.

"_I might just take you up on that in the near future ..." _Tsuruko repeated mentally to herself. _"Why not? As long as there are no survivors, then no knowledge of my involvement can reach Keitaro's ears, right?"_


	48. Grave Danger

Keitaro's feelings when in Kanako's presence didn't change even as they and Eizo studied some new reports from the scouting teams and began planning a new offensive against another enemy staging area. Being around her empowered him, he felt his confidence and general morale returning more and more with each passing hour. That voice in the back of his head that had been crying foul all the while never went away, but seemed to recognize that it could not influence his feelings and began to tone down.

Kanako, for her part, was also experiencing some unexpected thoughts and feelings. For how many years she had longed for intimacy with Keitaro, the fulfillment of that wish left her feeling something less than the euphoria she had expected. The stressful, antagonistic interactions between them prior to that moment were hardly the setting she had envisioned for their union, but the largest patch of bittersweet had been Keitaro's reaction. She was also getting a boost from Keitaro's presence and it was quite obvious that Keitaro's immediate well-being had benefited enormously from their experience. It was clear to her that Keitaro recognized this and was contemplating it, but at the same time his hesitancy and uncertainty remained plainly visible. Up until now, she had always viewed this as simply his naivety, something that would go away as soon as he realized how much more another immortal had to offer him over a human. However encouraging his recent signs might be, the fact that he still had his doubts at this point was forcing a thought into her head that she had thus far been able to suppress. Now, as their battle planning was nearing an end, he mind began to wander.

"_What if I truly cannot make Keitaro happy?" _Kanako found herself thinking. _"Even after being with me, a part of him still yearns for Naru. He obviously knows now that I can give him a union that is simply not possible with a human, and yet ... and yet ..."_

"Kanako? You still with us there, friend?"

Eizo's voice snapped Kanako out of her trance and she found Eizo and Keitaro both staring at her over the table.

"Yes. Sorry," was her reply, as she shifted her thoughts back to the mission.

"So are we in agreement then?" Eizo asked, motioning to their rough sketch of their attack plan.

"Absolutely."

"Keitaro?"

"Yes."

Eizo nodded. "Very well then. Keitaro, if you'll get the boats ready, I'll pass these plans on to Rikyo and meet you at the docks in one hour."

"Yes sir," Keitaro replied enthusiastically.

Kanako stood up with him. "I should get back to Tokyo and catch up with Gennai as well. I will collect the vampire detachment and meet you all at the rendezvous point."

"Then let us get a move on. I'll see you both soon."

With that, Eizo gave them each a short bow and left the room, leaving Keitaro and Kanako to walk down to the docks alone with one another.

Unexpectedly, it was Keitaro who broke the silence shortly after they had left the building.

"Your silence hurts my ears more than a hundred rifles going off at once," Keitaro said with an attempt at casual humor.

Kanako smiled thinly. "Sorry. Just a little lost in thought I guess."

"Somehow, I'm guessing those thoughts you speak of have nothing to do with the coming mission."

Kanako's smile faded, and her pace slowly fell until she had stopped walking. Keitaro stopped too slightly ahead of her, then turned around and stepped back to face her.

"Look, I'm sorry Kanako. I know that I have probably seemed rather insensitive tonight. I just ..." he trailed off, looking away from her for a moment before taking a deep breath and meeting her gaze again. "This is difficult for me, but I think we need to level off with each other before the battle begins anew. I'm going to be as frank as I can be."

Kanako nodded him to continue.

"I cannot deny that since we ... spent the day together ... I have come to understand a little of what you were talking about with regards to the intimate connection between immortals. However, though you might not understand and as much as you may disapprove, the simple fact is that I have not given up my human connections nor my love for Naru."

Kanako cringed at the mention on Naru's name, but Keitaro pressed on.

"I should feel terrible about what we did. Not only for Naru's sake, but also for yours. I have always cared for you, Kanako, but I have never once thought of you as a lover, and it is unfair of me to lead you on like this."

Kanako's expression was hardening all the while Keitaro was talking, but she kept quiet and allowed Keitaro to keep talking uninterrupted.

"However ..." Keitaro said slowly, with another pause and deep breath, "No matter how much I think that I should, I _don't_ feel bad about what happened. Quite the contrary, I feel as though a tremendous weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Just being in your close proximity like this has me feeling empowered and invigorated. The reality is that I was in pretty bad shape prior to yesterday, and now I feel almost back up to par. It is crystal clear to me that this is thanks to you ... and to us. Let the fact that I am even able to say what I'm about to say testify for itself how unclouded my head is right now; what I have been told ever since being turned, about how I should leave my old life behind and live my new one amongst my own kind, used to tear me up inside just to think about. But if only for this moment, I can see objectively and without emotion some of the wisdom in that advice."

Only with Keitaro's last sentence did Kanako's demeanor begin to soften. It eased Keitaro slightly to sense this, and he continued.

"Regardless of whom one wishes to lay the blame on, the bottom line is that my continued association with my human friends has gotten one of them killed. Only sheer luck saved the rest of my friends from the same fate. As long as I remain bound to them, they will never truly be safe. It is said that sometimes, if you truly love something, the only thing you can do is let it go. It is for them, not for me, that I am forced to consider that, and it is only the empowerment you have given me that allows me to do so. I cannot make any promises about anything. I am still in a very difficult position. But I wanted to acknowledge where I am at, and how you have helped me get there."

Kanako seemed at a loss for words. Keitaro sensed the awkwardness and didn't allow it to drag on.

"Anyway, I hope we can both carry on our duties without this holding us down. Maybe it was unfair of me to open this line of thought now, when we cannot sit down and discuss it in earnest. But I felt like I needed to say it."

Kanako was silent for a moment, then nodded slightly.

"I'm glad you did," she said simply.

They were quiet for the rest of the walk down to the docks. When they got their, it took some time to load the boats with all their equipment, and then, as Kanako was going elsewhere than Eizo and Keitaro with her small group, the three leaders bid one another good luck. Eizo and Keitaro boarded their vessel and Kanako hers, and the small fleet set out for the mainland, Kanako's boat veering off from the rest as their paths split.

* * *

This time, the alliance set up their staging area in an area of uninhabited woods. While this was less convenient in terms of location, it did put the Lycans in their element. Though it would also make their base easier to find for any enemies in the area, that fact gave them the advantage in defense. Not that they expected trouble there, for the initiative had passed back to them, and not having to expend much effort in hiding their activities from a human presence meant that response times would be shortened.

* * *

Kanako rejoined them 2 nights later, bringing with her Gennai's troops as well as more equipment, and an intelligence report detailing their next targets as well. Her enthusiasm had returned with a vengeance, and eagerly she filled in her comrades on the situation.

* * *

"Why do we keep getting interrupted with these little side missions without ever really being told what it's all about?" The vampire responded, annoyed at the new orders he had just received.

"New information from Source Whisper indicates that thi ..."

"What the hell is this Source Whisper we all keep hearing about? The prospects of this war have gotten bad enough without having to worry about being led around by the nose from some mystery agent who can't even be identified!"

The senior vampire's expression stiffened with irritation.

"I, for one, am growing tired of insolent soldiers who don't know their place," he replied sternly. "You don't make the decisions, you do what you're told. If you have such a problem with that, you are more than welcome to take it up with the Regent. Otherwise, I'm through explaining myself to you. Do your job, or I'll replace you with someone who will. Got that?"

The subordinate vampire bit his tongue. "Yes sir," he said, in the most sarcastic tone he dared to use.

* * *

Two primary targets had been identified by Gennai's scouts, and the two teams sent to attack them had of course been dealt the majority of the force. Eizo was leading the group responsible for assaulting the new supply base being used by the foreign vampires, while Keitaro and Kanako we at the head of a team whose task it was to intercept enemy reinforcements that, it was believed, would be arriving at a particular port that very evening. To cause the enemy maximum confusion and chaos, it was planned to launch both attacks simultaneously if at all possible.

Kanako and Keitaro rode in different vehicles, both at the head of their convoy. Or rather, a convoy of a sort - all vehicles were in constant contact and heading towards the same destination, but to make themselves less noticeable to prying eyes, the team was split up, with no more than 2 vehicles together anywhere until their destination was reached. Upon arriving at the point nearest to the port as they planned to go prior to the actual attack, the team spread out, creating a perimeter around the entire dock. Those foreign vampires already in country had taken care that the area was cleared of human activity and were actively patrolling to ensure that no unwanted visitors - human or otherwise - entered the area. This did make observing the enemy's activity more difficult, as considerable subterfuge was needed not to tip off those patrols that they were being watched. As part of that subtlety package, radio traffic was to be as minimal as possible, and all communications were to be voiceless, text-only transmissions, all encrypted.

After an hour or so of uneventful surveillance, Kanako's cell phone buzzed in her pocket, indicating a new message had been received. Keitaro had been sitting next to her in the front seats of the SUV that was serving as their impromptu C&C, and he watched as Kanako connected her phone to a computer, ran the decryption sequence, and read the message.

_**Kanako - **_

_**A small detachment of enemy vampires has been observed arming up and departing their staging area, intent on an unknown operation. The group is too small to be much of a threat in of itself, but judging by the known enemy commanders present at their departure, it is believed that their purpose is still significant somehow. They are headed in a direction that would make you more able to intercept than Eizo's people. Only six foreign vampires were directly observed, please dispatch an appropriate force immediately to determine what they are up to. One of our agents is currently tailing them and will update you on their location en route.**_

Kanako and Keitaro read the message together, then looked at one another inquisitively.

"My guess it it's either an armed reconnaissance mission or some sort of VIP escort," Keitaro offered.

"Seems as good a guess as any," Kanako agreed, "but HQ still seems to think this could be important. One of us should go check it out, just in case it does end up being something where the presence of an officer would be desirable."

"Want me to go?"

Kanako gave him a deep look.

"I sort of suspected that circumstances would split us up again," she began, her tone of voice firm but cautious. "As you know, it was part of my agreement with Rikyo for bringing you back into the field that you were not to be sent on an independent mission."

For the first time since leaving the Lycan island, Keitaro suddenly looked genuinely uncomfortable.

"However," continued Kanako, "I will again extend to you my personal trust. I will take a team to deal with this little footnote, and I would like for you to keep charge here while I'm gone. I'm sure you can come up with a reason why I'm temporarily unavailable should anyone ask, but it would be harder for me to explain to Rikyo why you are no longer where you are supposed to me. Agreed?"

Keitaro looked little more at ease, but nevertheless nodded his agreement.

"Very well then. For the record, your orders are to hold position and neither reveal our presence nor engage the enemy if either can be avoided, until Eizo is in place and the time is right. I'll keep in touch as best I can. See you soon."

With that, Kanako exited the vehicle and set about collecting teammates for her new mission.

* * *

Tsuruko had been unusually adamant regarding the hast of the attack on the remainder of Keitaro's human companions, and even more unusually, about her insistence on taking part in the mission personally. Those vampires that she had personal dealings with were, at first, very reluctant to allow a human to accompany them into battle, even if said battle was more planned as a one-sided massacre. It took a not so subtle hint from Tsuruko that the loss of her reconnaissance network could prove awkward for their invasion plans, and that certain tidbits of information "leaking" to the native immortals could be downright troublesome, to convince the foreign vampires that perhaps Tsuruko's presence wouldn't be such a burden after all. Besides, they had reasoned, their targets were not powerful immortals, but ordinary humans, and against such adversaries Tsuruko was more than capable of looking after herself. In any event, Tsuruko was aboard the van that was on a beeline for a certain duplex address, and to her, the ride felt much, much longer than it really was.

* * *

Haruka was engaging in some light exercise when the obnoxious wail of Suu's freshly installed early warning system's klaxon shot her quickly to her feet from her crunch position. Suu had briefed everyone on the functions of the defense system she had set up, and as per that briefing, everyone else was already in their designated meeting place, the main living area on Suu's side of the duplex, by the time Haruka had grabbed the emergency bags from her closet and arrived there herself. But no one had a chance to do anything else before the first explosion rocked the duplex, knocked out the power, and cracked the back wall.

The gunner lowered his RPG launcher and looked with satisfaction at the hole he'd just blown through the rear of the house. Usually, on those occasions when humans were targeted for elimination, subtlety was the order of the day, but on this was another of those cases where a more showy death for the targets was not just allowed, but positively encouraged.

Without speaking to one another, the foreign vampires moved in towards the shattered duplex. They all knew what they were here for, for a few of them had also participated in the last raid on the human friends of their enemy, and were already so consumed with the anticipation of violence that the idea of meeting effective resistance didn't cross their heads until it was too late.

Suu's backup generator purred to life as a string of UV lights lit up the surrounding area with those deadly purple rays so detrimental to the complexion of vampires. Surprise and pain replaced bloodlust in the minds of the attacking vampires very quickly, and with their skin already searing and smoking, they quickly retreated back to a safe distance. Anger quickly returned however, and even as the vampires began to slowly heal, they began shooting out the UV lights with their carbines and pistols.

"Shit," hissed Suu, as she rapidly flipped between video feeds at her control console. "They've got us surrounded, and those UV lights are going fast. That rocket hit was a lucky shot that took out the targeting computer for the guns I rigged. I think we are in trouble now."

Anytime Suu spoke so seriously made anyone around her uncomfortable at the best of times, but even Haruka bore a strained expression as she surveyed feeds that Suu was watching. Moments later, dust and debris flew as a string of bullets punched through the wall and sent the residents diving for cover. Suu took one last look at her screens, then grabbed her own rifle, dropped to the ground, and she and Haruka crawled quickly to where Seta was preparing to return fire through one the jagged holes in the wall.

"There's not very many of them. I've only seen 2 or 3 in the field of view I've got, so figure probably two or three times that number total," Seta whispered to Haruka.

"In past situations I wouldn't be too worried about those odds, but in this case I think we've got our hands full," was Haruka's response. "Retreat seems an unlikely option, so I say we put a gun in everyone's hand, circle the wagons in here, and hope for the best."

Seta and Suu both shared a look of apprehension, but then nodded all the same.

"I don't have any better ideas," Seta replied solemnly. He looked over at Sarah and his other friends, spread out in the center of the room hugging the ground for dear life.

_"I don't know how we're gonna get out of this one,"_ Seta thought to himself, then peered through the hole in the wall, picked out a blur of motion that he assumed to be a vampire, and squeezed the trigger of his rifle.


	49. Repeat of History

The firefight was not going well for the Hinata refugees, as it was quickly obvious to Haruka and Seta that they were outnumbered, outgunned, and outmatched. However, after 10 minutes or so of gunfire exchange, despite the fact that the non-combatant residents were doing a good job of keeping their heads down, both Haruka and Seta had enough of a level head to realize that it was rather odd that no one had actually been hit. Haruka was the first to speculate to herself that the attacking vampires might just be toying with them, keeping them pinned down while they closed the range for a more personal kill, but she saw little reason to voice that thought, as there was nothing they could do about it in any case. But the next explosion almost made her doubt the conclusion that the vampires were not trying to kill them from a distance.

Several rockets slammed into one wall at the same time, disintegrating most of it and peppering everyone inside with shrapnel. Seta and Haruka both grunted as they were forced to protect their eyes from the flying debris, and Shinobu screamed.

* * *

For the attacking vampires, their excitement reached a fevered pitch. Not only had they been given rare permission to kill humans, they had been specifically instructed to do so as sadistically as possible. "We're sending a message to our enemies" was the only explanation they'd been given, but no explanation was needed at all. It was their pleasure. Their prey had already put up more of a fight than they had expected and this excited them even more, but now their shelter was breached and it was time to get down to the dirty work. No more gunfire, their orders - and their own sadistic intentions - demanded that these humans be taken alive. Slinging their weapons over their shoulders, the vampires rushed the smoking ruins.

The first vampire to reach the gap in the wall was almost drooling in savage anticipation. Two of his victims, both armed with rifles, lay before him. One man, one woman. Both were shaking debris from their eyes when he arrived, and hardly had time to look up at him before he acted. He lunged for the woman. She was a pretty young lady, and she was all his. First come, first serve.

Once again his intentions were foiled by the searing fire of UV light, but this time it wasn't just the general attack from a floodlight. The powerful UV spotlight had been aimed at his center of mass, but as he had lunged at his target he inadvertently stuck his head right into the beam. He tried to scream, but as he opened his mouth to do so the deadly focused light simply seared through to the back of his throat, about the same time that his bulging eyes burst in two little puffs of ash. What remained of his charred remains narrowly missed Haruka as she rolled out of the way.

* * *

Haruka and Seta were practiced enough not to allow this unexpected help to distract them, and instead of looking back at the source of the UV spotlight, they capitalized on the confusion it caused among their attackers. Both fired several volleys from their rifles, and two more vampires fell to the streams of incendiary bullets.

* * *

Beads of sweat glistened on Suu's forehead as she intensely watched her tracking screen. Recognizing that no human had the reflexes to target a vampire with any sort of weapon should said vampire be intent on evading it, she had rigged a UV spotlight to a motorized aiming device, slaved to a dual thermal/low light targeting sensor. The spotlight itself was protected by a layer of bullet-proof glass, but the mounting itself had only a small armor panel to protect the operator, as Suu had figured that any situation necessitating her use of the weapon would take place indoors where a tank-like device could not be used. Though she trusted her own skills as a technician, Suu nevertheless did not at all like the idea of trusting her life and those of her friends to a machine that was not operating with any input from her whatsoever, but she accepted that there was no alternative in this case. Her contribution was to follow the movements of any vampire that came into sensor range, and attack as best she might with her own carbine should the spotlight fail to stop it.

* * *

Meanwhile, Kanako's group arrived on the scene just a few minutes before the explosion that leveled the duplex's wall. Her group totaled six including herself, and the sound of gunfire quickly alerted them to a bad situation. It was clear that the foreign vampires were attacking a particular duplex, and that someone inside was fighting back. Kanako knew that none of Gennai's personnel or assets would be in there, and assumed that Rikyo would have told her about this place if he had anyone or anything here worth protecting, so she had no idea what this engagement was about, but quickly made the executive decision that if it was worth the foreign vampires' efforts to destroy, it was worth her effort to intervene. Kanako and her team were advancing together at a perpendicular angle to the duplex when the explosion drowned out the gunfire.

"No more time for finesse. Move in now!" Kanako called to her companions through her radio. The six of them quickly rushed forward into the melee, with Kanako leading the way. She started slightly when she saw the UV beam nearly vaporize one of the attacking vampires, and the way that two others quickly succumbed to bullets told her that whoever was inside obviously knew what it was that they were fighting, and that they knew how to kill vampires. As, being very intent on whoever or whatever was inside the duplex, it did not appear that the 3 remaining foreign vampires had noticed them yet, Kanako silently signaled to her team to halt their advance.

_"Are Gennai and Rikyo not telling me something?" _Kanako thought to herself. _"This duplex must belong to one of them, but why would they not tell me about it if it was so vulnerable to attack? There have been no known human organizations in Japan that are aware of immortals for centuries, and it's unlikely that these invaders know something we don't to that regard. The only humans who would know how to fight us are ..."_

The knot cinched in Kanako's stomach before she even completed her though as the implications of it set in. As if to add exclamation to her inner monologue, one of the foreign vampires knelt down behind a nearby boulder, produced a radio from his pack, and began speaking angrily into it. The other two, both with looks of absolute disgust and fury on their faces, pulled out large cylindrical devices from their packs. Transparent panels down the sides of the devices instantly identified them to Kanako as firebombs.

_"Oh man ..."_

Without a word, Kanako leapt back to her feet and opened fire with her carbine on full auto. The rest of her team quickly followed suit, and the radio vampire on the other end quickly rolled around the boulder to put it between himself and Kanako's group. Someone's incendiary rounds hit one of the firebombs, which promptly burst wide open in a rolling sheet of flame and consumed the bomber, but the second bomber, with a last bellow of rage before the flames reached him too, flung the firebomb with great force into the gaping hole in the duplex. At the same time, the radio vampire had recovered another RPG from his pack, trained it on Kanako's team, and fired.

Their eyes drawn to the fiery blast from the exploding firebomb, Kanako's team couldn't react in time, and the warhead struck the ground about 6 feet behind Kanako and exploded. White-hot magnesium-laced shrapnel slammed into Kanako's armor and tore into the exposed flesh on the back of her head and neck, knocking her down and sending the rest of her closely-spaced team down as well.

Searing pain blinded Kanako's senses as the burning magnesium bored into her. She couldn't see, her ears only distantly registered the sound of gunfire both near and far, and all her tactile senses rendered was the feeling of fire burning into her skull and neck. Even her unconscious will to scream went unanswered by her body. Her consciousness began to fade away into darkness.

Only two of the team were relatively unhurt by the grenade blast. One began exchanging gunfire with the grenadier, while the the other rushed to Kanako's side. Finding her completely unresponsive but still alive, he grabbed a pair of pliers from a pouch on his leg. Working with vampiric speed and precision, he jammed the pliers into all of Kanako's wounds, feeling and then gripping the deadly shrapnel and yanking it out of her. His partner was still engaged with the surviving foreign vampire, and he decided that it was time to cut their losses. Staying as low as he could, he picked Kanako's limp form off the ground and, holding her by her arms, slung her over his shoulder, then collected another of his fallen comrades as he made his way towards his partner as quickly as he could. Shifting both his passengers' arms under one of his own, he used his free hand to pick up of the carbines lying on the ground by his feet and opened fire at his enemy.

"You grab those two, I think the situation calls for a tactical withdraw! I'll cover you!" He shouted at his partner, who immediately complied. Once he had the other two casualties over his back, the two made a firing retreat until safely out of range, then made haste for their vehicle.

* * *

It was probably only the great force with which the enraged vampire had thrown his firebomb that saved the lives of his intended targets. Instead of igniting in the center of the room, it smashed into the far corner before bursting, and the great kinetic energy it carried also carried much of the blast right through the wall and out of the duplex. Nevertheless, the building was being very rapidly overcome by the flames, friends were separated by fire and smoke, and there was little anyone could do but to save themselves.

Haruka and Seta, being nearest to the collapsed wall, were able only to grab Naru and Sara before being forced back by the flames and smoke, and made good their escape through the hole. There were other ways out of the building though. At the moment the question didn't even occur to them as to whether or not the danger of the foreign vampires was past. Given that they hadn't been attacked again yet, it seemed a lesser danger than the inferno that was fast engulfing yet another of their homes. Making sure that Sara and Naru stayed close - not that they weren't too shocked to do anything else in any case - they quickly ran back towards the part of the duplex that wasn't completely uninhabitable yet.

* * *

Kitsune had managed to escape through a window, and was on her knees in the grass catching her breath when Haruka and company found her. She had some reddened skin and singed hair, but was otherwise unhurt. Quickly satisfied that Kitsune was alright, the search resumed for the two of their number still missing.

The duplex had been equipped with a sprinkler system, but the sprinklers were out of their depth in trying to counter explosively distributed jellied gasoline. Although most of it had been lost out the bomb's exit hole, what remained of the badly damaged building was being overwhelmed by fire in a short order. Several circles around the burning hulk and a few tentative explorations of what parts of the building that could be accessed in any way revealed no sign of Shinobu or Suu.

The parallels between this instance and the circumstances of Mutsumi's death were not lost on Naru, and as it became more and more evident that the likelihood of finding their friends had fallen to an apparent zero, she began to break down. As the group stopped walking around the building and Haruka and Seta exchanged glances, the color began to drain out of Naru's face. Kitsune, who was by Naru's side, was the first to take notice of her soft whimpering, and when she turned and looked at her friend she saw that Naru was suddenly shivering as though she was freezing.

"Hey, you alright Naru? Kitsune asked softly. She gently put her arm around Naru, and at her touch, Naru went limp and sank to her knees.

"Hey guys! I think Naru's hurt!" Shouted Kitsune, who slowly followed Naru down to prevent her from collapsing. The others quickly turned around at Kitsune's words. Sara was clinging tightly to Seta's hand, so Haruka knelt down on one knee in front of Naru and gave her a quick looking over.

"Do you see any wounds on her back, Kitsune?" Haruka asked after she was satisfied that Naru's front side was undamaged. Kitsune still held Naru under the shoulders but scooted back slightly so that she could see.

"Nothing obvious, no," was Kitsune's concerned reply.

"We have to get her out of here," Haruka began, looking back and up at Seta. "She might have internal injuries, and come to think of it, who knows what happened to those other vampires. I don't think we got all of them."

Sara clinched Seta's hand a little tighter, and also looked up at him with a hardened expression.

"But what about Shinobu and Suu? We can't just leave them here," she said, trying hard to maintain her composure but with an obviously strained voice.

Seta looked down sadly at her.

"There's nothing we can do for them, dear. We can only look after ourselves now."

Sara's eyes shed a few silent tears and her expression was one of wanting to argue, but she was a smart girl and knew that her papa was right. She just responded with a short nod and looked back down.

"Kitsune, do you think you can help Naru walk? Let's get going, the van is on the other side of the building and might still be OK."

Kitsune nodded. "Yeah, I think so." She lifted Naru gently back to her feet, and with what seemed more like basic motor memory than any deliberate action, Naru's feet steadied her once they were again flat on the ground.

"Let's go," Kitsune said softly into Naru's ear, and the group slowly started walking back around to the front of the duplex with Haruka leading and Seta bringing up the rear.

As she rounded the burning building, a flash of movement caught Haruka's eye. Fast, but giving her just enough time to react. The rifle butt whipped straight toward her head and cracked loudly as it struck Haruka's own rifle that she had managed to raise in time to deflect it. She caught a glimpse of her attacker's icy blue eyes as they locked back onto her, and with a manic expression the vampire swung his rifle butt back at her. Haruka's reflexes enabled her to avoid the worst of the strike, but it still dealt her a glancing blow to the ribs. She grunted, but still flung her rifle at the vampire, her hands continuing in their motion to draw the pistol she was wearing in a concealed holster underneath her belt line. The vampire swatted her rifle out of the air and lunged for her again, this time discarding his own weapon and attacking bare-handed.

Incendiary bullets from Seta's rifle stitched the vampire up his center of mass, disrupting his attack and allowing Haruka to neatly sidestep, drawing bead on his head as he went by. Haruka fired a double-tap at point blank range, and the two rounds messily blew out most of the opposite side of the vampire's head. It was all over before anyone else could do more than gasp in surprise and alarm.

Her heart still pounding furiously, Haruka approached the now motionless vampire, her pistol firmly trained on what was left of his head. Giving the corpse a solid kick to roll it onto its back, she adjusted her aim to right in between the seemingly lifeless eyes and put two more rounds there for good measure. She noticed that the vampire already had at least half a dozen bullet wounds on his body that hadn't come from Seta's burst.

_"Geez, this thing was already shot up and it still fought like that?" _Haruka thought to herself with dismay. _"Seta and I together are barely a match even for a badly wounded vampire. Are we humans really this helpless against immortals?"_

Seta broke Haruka's train of thought. "Come on, let's get out of here," he said firmly. Haruka was of no mind to disagree.

Fortunately for them, Seta's van was indeed undamaged, and the five of them made good their escape. Naru was still in seemingly bad shape, and so they set a course for the hospital where Dr. Hasagawa worked. Some combination of shell shock, resignation, and the ability to focus on the still alive but imperiled Naru meant that no one said a single word about Shinobu and Suu for the entire ride.

* * *

The jostling of the car and the hustle and bustle inside woke Kanako after a short while. With the offending incendiary fragments removed from her body, her healing abilities had set to work. Burns healed much more slowly than other types of injuries, and Kanako immediately became aware of perhaps the worst headache she had ever experienced. Nevertheless, she didn't miss a beat in remembering what had happened.

"What happened back there? Did we find out what those foreign vampires were doing there?" Kanako asked, startling her companions as they hadn't noticed that she had regained consciousness.

"I'm afraid we didn't, mam," one of her comrades responded. "We killed a couple of them and got a few shots into another, but that grenade turned the tables on us and we had to retreat."

He motioned for Kanako to look in the back. She did, and saw 3 bodies covered in blankets. "We thought we might have lost you too. You took some mean damage to your head and neck," he continued, after seeing that Kanako had taken in the sight of their casualties.

"Thanks for rescuing me," Kanako began, "but now I need you to take me back."

The driver looked at her through his mirror in surprise, and the front passenger again responded.

"I wouldn't recommend that, mam. You still need to heal, and whatever those foreign vampires were after, they will have gotten it by now anyway."

Kanako tried not to let the urgency she now felt creep into her voice.

"I appreciate your concern, but there is something I need to check out."

"We'll call for another team then, and we should let them ..."

"Take me back right now. That's an order. Please don't make me ask again."

The passenger and driver exchanged apprehensive looks, and then the driver responded with a simple, "Yes mam."

* * *

Tsuruko was fuming. She and her vampires had parked some distance away from the duplex, and as soon as they had arrived, they had locked her in the vehicle. "You'll only get in our way," they had told her. "We promise we'll save a little fun for you, but we'll come and get you when we're ready for you." The vehicle had armored glass windows as well as armored body panels, and it had taken her some effort to break out of it. As soon as she had gotten out, she could already hear the sounds of battle, gunfire and then a couple of explosions. Making a mental note to "deal with" these particular vampires once the war was over, she ran as fast as she could in the direction of the duplex.

The sight that befell her upon her arrival, though, only served to to anger her even more. What little remained of the duplex was an unrecognizable inferno, and the dead bodies lying about the scene were not those that she had been expecting to find.

"Damn fools," Tsuruko said to herself out loud as she started down at one of dead vampires. "Do all immortals routinely underestimate their enemies these days, or is that a characteristic you bring from overseas?"

She barely contained her desire to spit in the corpse's face in disgust, her monologue going internal now. _"Killing these people would be a powerful psychological weapon against Keitaro and our enemies, and now thanks to your incompetence, we might not get another chance."_

The vampire who had been carrying the keys to their vehicle was not one of those who had been vaporized by the exploding firebomb, and after fishing the keys out his pocket, she started back towards the vehicle, but before she had gotten far her eyes caught a glimpse of movement.

* * *

Although she had nearly passed out from smoke inhalation herself, Shinobu had managed to drag the already unconscious Suu into another room before the main living area was impassible. There, she had tried to catch her breath and call for help, but another round of gunfire drowned out her screams. The smoke soon began creeping into that room too, and the temperature began to soar as well. There was no door to the outside, and the only window was small, just barely big enough for the two of them to get through. With the strength that comes from fear and desperation, Shinobu broke out the window with a chair and just managed to push Suu's limp form out of it, although by that time the room was well and truly on fire, and Shinobu got another few lungfuls of smoke before she managed to escape herself. Feeling herself sliding towards unconsciousness, she dragged Suu around the corner to where the firebomb had blown through the wall, and was able to hide herself and Suu under a few pieces of debris before the combination of smoke inhalation and exhaustion turned her world black.

The heat from the intensely burning duplex brought Shinobu uncomfortably back into awareness. Suu was still unconscious, and so after taking a moment to listen for any sign of activity over the roar of the fire, she dragged Suu out from under the debris to a distance where the heat from the fire was no longer overwhelming. Hiding her as best she could behind some bushes, Shinobu, still rather dazed herself, ran back towards the duplex, hoping that someone might still be around waiting for them. A quick once-around revealed no one but but dead vampires on the grounds, which she avoided nervously. Despair was fast setting into Shinobu when she at last sighted a familiar figure approaching her.

"Motoko?" Shinobu called out to the figure, as she began trotting towards her. The figure did not answer, but as they got closer Shinobu recognized the person more completely.

"Tsuruko? Thank goodness! I need your help! Suu and I are alone out here and weaaAAACCCCHT!"

The two had closed to arm's length range as Shinobu finished talking, and before Shinobu could finish her sentence Tsuruko had drawn her sword and run Shinobu through the chest with it.

The piercing pain quickly became something akin to an out-of-body experience as shock quickly set in. Her mouth hanging open in utter dismay, Shinobu glanced briefly down at the blade stuck in her body and the crimson red blood that was fast staining her clothes, then back up at Tsuruko. The elder woman's eyes were dark with fury and hatred.

"You are the friend of a monster, and that makes you my enemy," Tsuruko said coldly. "Die knowing that I will personally make sure that all of you who led my sister astray will pay the same price for your crimes."

With those words, Tsuruko violently yanked her blade from Shinobu's body, the enlarged wound spurting dark blood as Shinobu fell face first to the ground.

Recalling Shinobu's words about Suu being around here too, Tsuruko pulled a small cloth from her sleeve and wiped the blood off her sword as she spun around to look for her. Less than a minute later though, a pair of fast approaching headlights interrupted her. It was her first reaction to stand and fight, figuring that it was likely to be either Seta or Haruka returning for their missing friends, but against her inclinations and with one dead enemy to temporarily quench her thirst for vengeance, she remembered that it was vital that her involvement must not be known to the native immortals, and if there was even a chance that someone might survive to tell of her actions - or that the new arrival might indeed be Keitaro attempting a belated rescue - discretion was once again the better course. Tsuruko sheathed her sword and vanished into the shadows.

* * *

Kanako was out of the vehicle before it had even come to a complete stop. "Sweep the area," she said. "I want any survivors, be they immortal or human, rescued and brought to me. I want any signs that survivors have left the are reported as well. Understand?"

"Do you know something about what this place was or who was occupying it?" Asked one of her companions, as he also jumped out of the vehicle and brought his carbine to the ready.

"I have a hunch, but it's sensitive information. I'm afraid I am not at liberty to speak of it."

The three vampires quickly spread out across the lot. The burning duplex was still making a lot of noise, but after counting the dead vampires on the scene she was reasonably confident that the battle was over. That head count also encouraged Kanako that the inhabitants of the duplex might not have been wiped out after all ... if they managed to escape the fire, that is.

Kanako was not left waiting for long. After only a few minutes, she heard one of her companions call out to her.

"Kanako! Over here!"

Looking in the direction of the voice, Kanako could see her partner down on one knee, his hand touching a motionless figure on the ground. She was at the scene in a flash, and her heart immediately sank.

Kanako recognized Shinobu right off. Quickly doing her own vitals check, it was apparent that the young girl was done for.

_"She's hardly got a pulse," _Kanako though to herself. _"Judging by the volume of blood on the ground, I give her another few minutes at most before she bleeds out."_

"Please leave us," Kanako said hastily to her companion. "Resume your search and let me know if you find anyone else. Otherwise, just toss those enemy vampires into the fire."

For the first time, her companion regarded her with noticeable suspicion.

"What are you going to do?" He asked, trying not to let that suspicion seep into his voice.

He failed in that effort. With a mixture of urgency and annoyance, Kanako stood up stepped right up to him. She was a good deal shorter than her partner, but she had an intimidation ability that belayed her unimpressive appearance.

"You were a much more effective soldier when you weren't questioning my orders all the time," Kanako replied shortly. "I've given you all the information that you are entitled to, and all you need to worry about is doing what you're told. Now get going!"

"Y .. yes mam," came the stuttered reply. Whatever suspicion he held was overridden by his fear of Kanako's wrath, and he quickly parted from her and resumed searching, taking care not to even look in her direction unnecessarily.

* * *

Once her companion was clear, Kanako knelt back down beside Shinobu. Her mind raced.

_"That's all Keitaro needs is for another of his friends to die," _she thought to herself. _"Shinobu here has only minutes to live, and there is nothing I can do for her besides let her die, or ... or ..."_

Kanako's heart quickened with her developing thought.

_"You know Gennai would have more than a few stern words with you if you do that. Besides, is that what Keitaro would want? To put her through that? Is that what Shinobu would want?"_

Kanako was not one to be indecisive, but this situation made her very uneasy. It was happening so fast, and she did not have time to think it out in too much detail. The choice would be made for her if she waited any longer.

Her eyes flashed over into an icy blue color as she made her decision.

_"Please, Keitaro. If you have ever trusted me, please believe that I am only doing what I think you would do if you were in my place. I promise that I will submit myself to your judgment when this war is over."_


	50. Admitting Defeat

Kanako's return caused a bit of a stir, as her little side job had been considered exactly that, and no one had been expecting half her team to come back dead. The condition of their armor and equipment clearly showed that even the survivors had taken a beating as well. Adding insult to injury, they had not been able to determine what the enemy's objectives had been.

Or rather, that was the official story when Kanako sent her report back to Gennai. Kanako had given explicit orders to her teammates that no mention was to be made of the fact that the vampires had been targeting humans. She hadn't told them who those humans were and why they had been marked for death, but Kanako knew that Rikyo would have been able to put two and two together without difficulty. The complications that could arise from Rikyo and Gennai finding out that Keitaro's human connections were still playing a part in this war were something that Kanako didn't want to deal with. On one hand, the fact that the enemy wanted them dead so badly seemed likely to at least prevent Rikyo from ordering their deaths himself, as that would only accomplish the foreign vampires' goal for them. But neither Rikyo nor Gennai were looking for wards that required valuable combat assets be diverted to protect them, to say nothing of the social taboo of being so closely involved with humans - Keitaro's situation was well known throughout the higher Lycan ranks, but the fact that Keitaro had always managed to keep his personal and professional lives neatly separate, as well as his excellent performance in his role, meant that a blind eye was turned and the situation was quietly accepted. In particular, the fact that Keitaro's human friends were fully knowledgeable about immortals would be a touchy subject should anyone care to take it up, and making them a focal point of the campaign would force the issue.

Kanako's surviving teammates were clearly uneasy about lying to their superiors, but were even more uneasy about the prospect of making an enemy out of Kanako, and did as they were told. "Besides," Kanako had reminded them, "if anything ever comes of this, it will come back on me, not you."

It was Kanako herself, however, who had the most difficult deception to contend with.

* * *

"Wow. Are you all right?" Keitaro asked just as soon as Kanako found him. He had met up with the rest of their group at a small hotel near the port that was their target. Morning was not long in coming, and so a number of rooms had been rented to sit out the day. Preparations had taken longer than anticipated, and it was clear now that there was not enough nighttime left for the attack they had in mind. Fortunately, the enemy reinforcements were late as well ... assuming that the intelligence reports were accurate and that they were coming at all, and to this port.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"What on earth happened out there?"

Kanako cringed inwardly. "Whatever the enemy was after, they wanted pretty badly. Perhaps our recent string of success made me a little overconfident." She gestured at her bloodstained clothing to emphasize the point.

"Were you able to find out what they were after?"

"I'm afraid not. Our initial approach was repulsed, and by the time we recovered, the foreign vampires must have gotten what they came for and were nowhere to be found."

Keitaro got a worried look on his face. "I sure hope Naru and the others are OK."

A jolt of adrenaline flashed through Kanako at his words, and an anxious knot in her stomach snapped to attention.

"I'm sure they're fine. We didn't find anything of concern afterwords, and we already know that ... well, if your friends were the target, they'd leave something behind to make sure you knew it."

That painful memory visibly stung Keitaro, but he closed his eyes and nodded with a deep breath. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Kanako quickly changed the subject. "Anyway, no sign of the rumored enemy reinforcements I take it?"

Keitaro welcomed the new line of thought. "No, nothing so far. I'm wondering if they decided to make a daylight landfall instead, something that we wouldn't be expecting and would make an attack more difficult."

"I hope that's the case then. It's either that or our information is completely wrong and who knows what the enemy is up to."

"Hey Kanako?"

Kanako had turned around as she set her bag down and began to remove her bloodied and damaged armor. At his words, the looked back at him and was surprised to see that Keitaro's expression had softened and he was looking at her with a look of calm comfort that seemed out of place considering he had just brought up the subject of his imperiled friends.

"Yes?" Kanako replied, her voice carrying her surprise more than she had hoped it would.

"I want to thank you again for sticking with me through this. I know I haven't made it easy for you to be my advocate, my partner, or ... anything else. I really do appreciate it."

Kanako smiled lightly out of the corner of her mouth. "If you are referring to my leaving you here to command unsupervised for a while, then I'm glad you appreciate it. Even though nothing bad happened, I imagine Gennai and Rikyo would each have half my head on a separate platter if they find out about it."

"No doubt, but that's only a small part of what I'm talking about."

_"Dammit Keitaro, talk about a lousy time to get all sappy on me," _Kanako thought to herself. She was already uncomfortable lying to Keitaro about his friends, and his sudden praise wasn't helping at all.

"In all fairness then, I suppose I should also thank you for taking my advances in stride," Kanako replied. "I may not understand the bond you share with your human friends, but I can at least understand than you are bound to them. I know that finding your balance between human and immortal connections has not been easy for you."

Just as suddenly as he had acquired it, Keitaro then seemed to lose his aura of comfort, and he just nodded an acknowledgment to Kanako's words. Kanako was relieved to see that Keitaro intended to end this line of thought, and she encouraged the notion by herself changing the subject back to the battle plan.

"Anyway, back to business," she began. "I see no reason not to proceed with the attacks as previously planned. Are we ready?"

Keitaro nodded again. "Yes. Eizo's group signaled readiness about 70 minutes ago. I told him that the enemy had changed his patrol pattern and that we needed a little extra time to reposition ourselves before moving in."

"What did Eizo say to that?"

"I really don't think that Eizo has any interest in making trouble for anyone but the enemy. He didn't question me, nor did he ask why you didn't answer the call yourself. He simply said that we should take whatever time we need to maximize our chances for success, and to let him know when it's time to strike."

"In that case, let us take a final observation of the target and get this show on the road."

* * *

Dr. Hasagawa had done a triple take when the battered survivors arrived at his door. As the semi-conscious Naru was carted away, he and Kitsune followed a short distance behind as Kitsune was seemingly attempting to explain the situation. Neither Haruka nor Seta could hear exactly what Kitsune was saying, but they didn't really think about it. Whether she was telling Koan the truth or spinning a more plausible explanation would just have to be addressed later. They and Sara were led to another exam room, where the orderly told them that a nurse would see them shortly and then closed the door behind him as he left.

Haruka had sat down on the exam table as Seta seated Sara on one of the chairs in the room, then walked over to Haruka's side. He gently pinched the bottom of Haruka's shirt and began to lift it.

"Let me take a look at those ribs," he said softly.

Haruka put her hand on top of his to stop him. "It's OK, I'm fi ..."

Her words were interrupted when Seta's other hand grabbed hers and moved it away with surprising forcefulness.

"Don't even start with your 'I'm invincible' crap," he said almost angrily. "I saw that hit you took. I don't care if it offends your ego, I will not allow you to leave this hospital with an untreated injury!"

Haruka was startled by the sternness of Seta's words. Looking into his eyes, she saw that they were deadly serious but the concern they carried was also crystal clear. Her capacity to resist him faded.

"Alright," she said quietly, and relaxed her arms. Seta met her gaze for a short moment, then lifted her shirt just high enough to expose her rib cage. An ugly and swollen black and blue bruise extended about six inches across her right side. Seta's expression remained steely as he ran his fingers across it, carefully probing the ribs that the wound crossed. Haruka sat unflinching, still watching his face as he went over her again, then lowered her shirt back down.

"See? It's just a bruise, nothing to get so worried about," Haruka said to Seta, who returned a somewhat cross glance.

"Look, I'm sorry, OK? I promise you that I will ask for help if I need it. In return, can you promise to remember that I am not a delicate little flower?" Haruka nudged him with her elbow and cracked a slight grin from the corner of her mouth.

Seta regarded her for a moment, then his expression finally lightened a bit. "It's alright. I just ..."

As Seta's words trailed off, Haruka stood up and wrapped her arms around him in firm embrace.

"I know, Seta. I know. And I do appreciate it."

* * *

It had been Kitsune's first instinct to tell Koan the whole story, but she quickly decided that that could wait for a better time. Instead, she explained that Shinobu and Suu had gone bowling, and that an accident had taken place at their new home that had started a fire in their absence. Historically Kitsune did have the ability to be a convincing liar when she needed to be, but Koan knew her intimately enough to see through tall tales. Nevertheless, he at least respected the fact that something very serious had happened, that one of Kitsune's friends was possibly seriously injured, and that if Kitsune didn't want to tell him exactly what had taken place, he could accept that for the time being.

After Koan spoke briefly with some nurses in the hallway, he had taken Kitsune with him to Naru's room. By then Naru had been sedated and was unconscious, and her ailments had been identified.

"You said that your duplex burned down, right?" Koan asked Kitsune.

"That's right."

"And you guys were trapped inside for a short while before being able to get out?"

"Yes."

"Was there debris falling from the ceiling perhaps?"

Kitsune thought for a moment. "I honestly don't know," she replied. "Things were pretty chaotic and noisy, but it is definitely possible."

Still aware that he was not getting the whole story, but nevertheless convinced that what she was telling him was true, he continued.

"Well, my best guess is that Naru either hit something trying to escape, or something fell on her, but she wound up with a bruised kidney. You also said that it was not immediately obvious that she was hurt, which can be explained by the adrenaline and shock of the fire."

"How bad is she?" Kitsune asked.

"She'll be OK. It would have been very painful at the time of injury and she'll be very sore for a while, but I don't think she'll need treatment beyond some painkillers."

Kitsune was unpleasantly surprised to realize that catastrophes were becoming common enough in her life that she did not feel any sort of panic or indeed even that much distress. Perhaps her work with Koan at the hospital had desensitized her somewhat too. Thoughts of her missing and presumed dead friends forced into the back of her mind, Kitsune just nodded.

Koan stepped over to her and put his hands on her shoulders, turning her slightly to face him directly.

"I'm not going to press you for it now, but I hope you will talk to me later about what happened tonight," he said gently, as he looked her straight in the eyes.

"I will. And soon."

The pair held their eyelock for a brief moment, then gave each other a quick hug.

"I'm going to keep Naru here overnight just to make sure that no unforeseen complications arise. Any of you may come and go as you please, and I'll be sure to give you a call when she is free to leave if no one is here. She'll be out for another few hours, so I am going to resume my rounds. Let me know if you need anything."

With those words, Koan parted ways with Kitsune, who stayed with Naru for a little longer before rejoining Haruka and the others.

* * *

Finding everyone to be OK, the nurses had cleared everyone but Naru to leave. Where exactly they were to go, however, now became their primary problem. Seta and Haruka agreed that simply finding a new home in the conventional sense had been shown to be a bad idea. This time they had had no early warning of the vampire attack either, and as such had had no opportunity to take anything with them but what what on their persons. They had persevered with their precaution of leaving stashes of money, supplies, and all-important immortal-killing incendiary ammunition and weapons elsewhere, as they had predicted that if they were discovered by the foreign vampires again, they may be forced to leave in a hurry and abandon most of what they had set up in their new home. Nevertheless, their material losses were not inconsiderable, and with their dwindling resources, they were forced to start thinking in terms of long-term survival. Haruka's tea shop had been closed for some time now, and although her commercial dealings with other shops generated a liveable income in traditional terms, it would not keep up with repeated events like this, even assuming that there continued to be survivors at all. With two more of their friends seemingly lost to this war, there was no subconscious notion of pride in their thoughts.

Seta had made the suggestion early on in his discussion with Haruka that they leave the country. It would be a simple enough affair for him to find an archeological task overseas and take Sara, Haruka, Kitsune and Naru with him. Based on what Keitaro had told them, it seemed probable that the invading foreign vampires were of European origin. Thus, Europe was not a viable destination, but it also seemed unlikely that these vampires would commit the manpower and resources into tracking them across Africa, South America or Australia.

Even right after Mutsumi's death, Haruka and Seta alike would have been incensed at the suggestion of being driven our of their own country. Now, however, the more they discussed it, the more attractive an idea it sounded.


End file.
